SAFA Skysailor Magazine

20 SKY SAILOR May | June 2022 One flight, many lessons by Steve Beilby Another beautiful sunny day at Shelley Beach, near Albany, on the south coast of WA. Only three days until Christmas (2021) and it was shaping up to be another perfect day for paragliding. I’m telling my story in the hope it may help others. It’s a first hand account of a water landing and some of the things that can go wrong. It is not about aerodynamics or wing recovery actions; but about knowing as much as you possibly can about water dangers and preparing for the worst. This incident happened barely a year after a PG friend drowned in the same area. A little background I had taken up paragliding early in 2018 and had flown around 530 hours total, on as many different sites as I could find, including a few in the USA and Spain. On this day, I was flying my Ozone Delta 4, an EN-C glider I’d bought almost a year earlier and had flown around 80 hours on. I had flown this site many times before, including six hours on the previous day. Over- night I’d camped at a friend’s nearby property, had an early night, a good night’s sleep and a decent breakfast. Photo: Arthur Sewell