Ridgely Today

[John Dullahan]

Arrived around noon, with Dale Anderson in the air, and Adam, Sunny, and Steve giving tandems. Wayne Devilbiss from NJ was setting up, and shortly afterwords Christin Titone arrived . The 10-12 wind was initially switching to SW, but eventually went NW. Adam towed me up in really gnarly air, and into some strong thermals. I got off at 2,100 ft, assuming I would just continue climbing in lift, but I couldn't find the boomers we had been in on tow. Pulled in VG and searched all over the north half of the field but found nothing until arriving at 1,400 ft over the unused car park just south of Race Track Road. It was nice steady lift that topped out at 3,750 msl about a mile east of the runway. I headed due east straight for a cloud, but stepped into really vicious sink. It was sink alarm all the way to the cloud, except that it had broken up when I got there. The sink continued to a cut hay field, where I found lift at 810 ft as I was setting up over a clump of trees. After it topped out at 2,800 msl there was nothing but strong sink; despite searching to the left and right of the track I was on. I decked it after 40 minutes at 12 miles, where Wayne picked me up (conditions were too gnarly for his PacAir Pulse). Christian reported very rowdy air on tow when flying his Millennium, and it didn't get any better off tow, making him a bit nauseous, so he landed after a relatively short flight. Wayne and another pilot (originally from Ukraine) got extendos after conditions mellowed. I was glad to see ongoing tandems all day. Both Wayne and Christian are staying overnight to fly again tomorrow.