After my first paragliding competition in North Macedonia in August, I signed up to the South Africa Pre-PWC/Porterville Open, at Porterville in South Africa. This was to form the first part of my extended holiday between jobs.
I arrived on the Wednesday before the competition, with the aim of having a few days of flying before the competition to familiarise myself with the area. However unfortunately the conditions were not that good, as I arrived too late to fly on the Wednesday, and was too tired anyway. On the Thursday I did a short flight back to the lodge, however I was still feeling the effects of the travel and was quite airsick, hence the short flight. The Friday was a non-flying day, see wine and lions, so all that was left was the flight on Saturday.
Saturday was a strange day, as it was the practice day for the competition, but there was no official task and no retrieve, and until the morning we did not even know there was an official lift up to launch. As the XC conditions looked good, a friend and I decided to hire a driver and plan an XC route, the classic route from Porterville to Clanwilliam. The route was really nice, and it was great to be out flying xc in December. Unfortunately the wind picked up more than expected and tore the thermals to pieces after “the constriction”, so we both bombed out just south of Clanwilliam dam. I decided to land on top of a hill as a safer landing option than in the valley below, I thought it was only a small hill until I started walking down, this also meant that it would have been perfectly safe to land in the valley as it was much wider than I thought!
The competition went fairly well for me, as it was only my second completion and it was definitely a step up from my last one in North Macedonia, which was designed for people who had never flown a comp before.
The tasks which were set were really good, however I did struggle with the flying in the flatlands, especially as I wasn’t very good at keeping up with the gaggle, which is definitely something that I need to work on, move on with the start gaggle.
Overall I felt that most of my starts were ok, I ended up in a reasonable position in altitude, but did have a bit of a struggle with my instruments on a few days.
I made goal a few times during the week which was rewarding. On the first day I bombed out in a field with another pilot, exactly 4.5km in a straight line east or west to a road, i.e. the worst place possible. So we had a very long and hot 7km walk out, as we walked around the fences, we were very glad when we got to the road and the van finally came to pick us up. A few days later I bombed out in exactly the same place as on the practice day, with a lot of other pilots, but this time I landed in the valley on a lovely grassy meadow, perfect.
As the week went on, I felt my flatland flying improved which was great, and to make goal on the last day was a really nice end to the competition.
I finished 11/34, or the top third, of the EN-C class, and 44/88, or the top half, overall. I definitely could have done better, and I made some bad decisions on a few days, but I am looking forward to taking my learning into the next comp.
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