SAFA Skysailor Magazine

20 SKY SAILOR June-July-August | WINTER 2025 One pilot didn’t manage this properly and jumped the gun by four minutes, resulting in a 123 point penalty. Plenty of things went right on the day. I was stoked to be able to stick with, or at least in the vicinity of, some top pilots throughout the flight. The pre-worlds comp was a great learning opportunity with the ability to observe most of the world’s best. Here’s a few of my lessons learned during this task. Don’t get distracted I had a good learning point at the start: be more observant! I was in a fairly equal position to the others in my gaggle moments before the start gate, when we exited the entry circle. Being a relatively low day, when I hit light lift just outside the circle, I scratched for a few turns not recognising that everyone else had started. It didn’t make sense since I was already at the max height we’d been achieving. My lack of consideration as well as observation for these put me one minute behind right from the start. Watch your drift Thermalling just before the second turn– point at Abella, I was a bit slow to realise that the climb was drifting me further away from the turnpoint and the climb rate didn’t justify staying. I had difficulty noting the drift direction on my instruments the way I had them set up. I’ve since adjusted my XCTrack screens to have a turnpoint bearing arrow superimposed over the top of the wind arrow to more easily recognise the drift direction while thermalling. After I landed, I read an ‘after midnight’ text from Dave Drabble in Australia. Ager Pre-Worlds, Task 5 Team dinner