I was with a large gaggle at the start and we were in the perfect position to go, but they kept hanging around. As far as I knew, no-one had left and I didn't want to go first. I decided it was too risky to wait and left. The gaggle came 6 minutes after me.
I found out later that the 4 Germans had gone 10 minutes before me. Ahead it looked good with a large cloud quite spread out in front of me. I took a few turns under it in not really good lift wondering if I was wasting my time there and then headed off towards the next cloud.
All of a sudden it didn't look good, so I slowed up looking for anything to get my height back again. I was heading over one of the less than landable areas with a power station to my left, a quarry underneath me a forest in front of me and a built up area on my right.
At 1500' I picked up a reasonable climb and could see the gaggle heading for me. I had good height on the gaggle, so I was able to shake them off over the next 30km or so.
I went to the end of the clouds at the furthest end of the first sector and then turned to go on a beautiful looking street running perfectly along the second leg. I met Turns at the street and we cruised along together for about 25km gaining height all the way.
Then we came to the end of the street and the sky ahead was dead. Upper level cloud had come over and we could see dying remnants of cumulus ahead. We slowed to best L/D, dropped water and kept going.
Down to 1500' we picked up 1kt, but it was dying. Jill Spreckley joined us and came onto the Aussie frequency saying "spread your wings girls, lets find something."
We managed to find enough to stay airborne, but we were drifting away from our second sector. The second sector was 15km from us and we needed to get into the sector to turn and have the wind behind us.
There were some gliders ahead and high from another competition so we headed over that way. Turns had got a little low and unfortunately, just a little too low to get to the next bit of lift.
I stayed with Jill who had a bit of height on me and we climbed as long as the thermal lasted to about 2500' and then had to continue. We both nipped into the second sector and turned. All I wanted was enough lift to maintain height and wait for the cycle to turn good.
I just kept going towards home at best L/D with the wind behind me and not a bump until I touched the ground. Jill landed about 10km further on. All but 3 of the field landed out. 2 who got home managed it because they had left that little bit earlier that made the difference and the other one took a very different track and did a much smaller distance.