SAFA Skysailor Magazine

20 SKY SAILOR September | October 2022 From AFL star to hang gliding thrill seeker – Jim Wynd’s rise to the sky Former AFL player James (Jim) Wynd traded in his footy boots after 147 matches with the Fitzroy Club in 1994 but that doesn’t mean he kept his feet on the ground for long.  After retiring from AFL, Jim followed a dream that he had about flying and discovered that it was the best decision of his life. He took up hang gliding, first testing it out on a tandem flight, becoming so hooked that he quickly trained for his own pilot licence to fly solo. “I always dreamt that I could fly and this recurring dream stayed with me my entire life,” Jim said. “As an AFL player, part of my contract condi- tions was that I could not be involved in extreme sports, which was ok at the time because I was focused on playing football.” But once he retired he was in the air and the experience blew him away with the feeling of flight being exactly what he had dreamed of all those times. Jim’s greatest flying experience was hang gliding the length of the Great Ocean Road for the first time in 2010, a trip he has now taken 40 times successfully and continues to do so. The 76km journey takes off from Bells Beach in Victoria and heads west towards Apollo Bay in South Australia, taking in a bird’s eye view of the spectacular south-east coastal scenery. But the trip is not for the faint-hearted, or inexperienced. For the flight to be successful, pilots need south-east to east wind around 15 to 20kt which is unusual for that part of the country, and it can be challenging to find the perfect time to take off. The Great Ocean