Possibly we would visit Dresden. Straussberg to visit the Stemme factory was checked on Swaantje's car GPS/Nav system who reported it to be a 2.5 hour trip so we decided it was too far.
Briefing was postponed to 11:15 and we fully expected it to be postponed even further so we set up chairs out of the potential rain in Swaantje's caravan annex and loaded "The Life of Brian" onto the mac.
We had just finished the scene where john Cleese's latin is corrected and he has to write "Romani" a hundred times when we noticed that other gliders were starting to rig and there was mention of a task having been set.
We were informed at the team captains meeting that a task was a 50:50 possibility with cloudbase at 1000-1200m and 1m/s thermals.
Gliders were asked not to grid before briefing.
First launch was programmed for 1:15pm. Before this however, the task was changed due to the possibility of rain showers and team captains needed to report and sign for the Task B sheets.
The task had been changed to an assigned area task for all classes. They don't set them quite the same way as we do at home. The minimum task times tend to be way under what you would expect to achieve making it a fixed task really anyway. Unless of course the Libelle can achieve > 115kph in Club Class with today's forcast ;)
After briefing, the western part of the sky had nice cu and blue patches and we started to take the gliders out to the grid.
15m class launched first, followed by Standard and then Club Class.
Pilots started in Standard Class over a spread of approx 20 mins.
We could hear our pilots talking for most of the task and it sounded like it was hard going.
Very soon cars and trailers began to depart. Then we received a phone call from Turns to saw she was safely in a paddock.
Trotts was still airborne. Some club and 15m gliders began to finish. Eventually there was no more lift and Trotts also found a paddock and made a safe outlanding. Only 3 Standard Class Gliders made it home, and Lisa Trotter was 5th for the day.
A "Come Together" party was planned for that evening with each team to contribute some food specific to their country. We were going to make damper in the fire pit outside but with most of our team off on retrieves, we postponed this to another night. Fortunately everyone arrived back in time to have something to eat and join in the party for a while. There was some seriously dangerous national drinks to try and interesting and yummy food from many nations.