Dutch Flatlands, day 2, task 2, task win :-)

Sunday had more wind and a very low cloudbase to start with. But the predictions were looking good. A 53 km task was set with a short crosswind leg followed by a tailwind leg and then a headwind leg to return to base.
We were towing upwind of a sailplane winch area which we couldn't cross beneath 700 m. But we were promised to be released on the upwind side of the field. That didn't happen when I got towed up. I was released at 500 m, right on the border of the restricted zone. So I immediately had to fly away against the wind, to find a thermal. Luckily, it worked out and I had 750 m when I crossed the border. That was a relief.
The thermal brought me to cloudbase at 1300 m. The view over the flatlands, woods and rivers of the Netherlands was magnificent!
I never got particularly strong climbs, but did have consistent ones and never got strong sink. I had nice final glide with a max speed of 112 km/h because I had to burn of some altitude. This resulted in a 1h20m flight and victory for the day.
Less good was that I had very painful arms during the flight because of a harness modification. I had cut off the blood and it was very hard to find some force to steer the glider. Luckely my thermals weren't rough. After landing my arms started shaking for a few minutes and they feel pretty sore today. But more on the harness modification in a later post.


In the general classification, Andre Disselhorst is on top, so he won the 2010 Dutch Flatlands. Congrats! Congratulations also to Koos de Keijzer who's the Dutch Champion for the 7th time! The Dutch Championship is the combined result of the Dutch Open and the Dutch Flatlands, so you have to be an allrounder to win it. And Koos did it many times now...