Learning to Fly

Noroca

Jussara and I got up the hill around 1pm and the wind was a light northerly. It had apparently been more of a nor’wester and was slowly turning northeast. We all waited for an hour or so thinking it would get better but then it turned back to the northwest. Noroca or Nor’wester seems a bit like a swear word on the hill and I could see everyone’s faces drop.

Geraldo, Mário, and I weren’t keen on waiting like the rest of them however, so we went over to the southwestern ramp and started inflating our gliders. There was some rain starting to fall a few kilometres further down the valley and I thought that as soon as the wind from that rain came into effect it should be strong enough for us to get a bit of lift. Sure enough Geraldo took off first to test the water and was able to fly back and forth along the ridge. Mário was next and went in after him. The space is pretty limited and it looked like there were some thermals forming a little further forward so they both started edging toward them.

I took off and stayed in very close to the ridge. Soon the thermals that Geraldo and Mário were chasing died and they were forced to head for the northern landing spot. The wind shifted round more to the southwest for a few minutes and I was able to get a bit of height in the lift. It was good fun playing around in such a tight area as I was forced to turn in toward the hillside a few times to keep myself in the rising air. Turning inward is frowned upon and not something I really like to do as I have almost been caught once when I did it and hit a downdraft and almost ended up in some trees.

I flew around for nearly 20 minutes and almost got enough height once to top land but it would have been too risky and I didn’t want to hear any I told you so’s if anything went wrong.

The wind then dropped and I headed down to the northern landing spot to join Mário and Geraldo. When we got back up the wind had swung back round to the northeast but never got strong enough to keep anyone up in the lift so everybody did the short flight straight down to the northern landing spot and called it a day.

Total flight time: 25mins