PG OPEN ROUND 2 – NELSON – DAY 7

Evan testing the waters. Yep, perfect backwind.

Friday we made a late start at Takaka, briefing on the hill at 13:00. Conditions looked lovely, if a little stable. The streamers were coming up the face beautifully.

Task was set from Takaka to Waitui Spur in the valley, back to take-off, in to Bush Knob, up to East Takaka and back to Takaka bomb-out.

Always keen to get off, Hamish Barker launched as soon as the window opened. He didn’t make it look terribly exciting, but was staying up. Mark Hardman rigged up, and was in the air pretty quickly behind Hamish, but had to wait for the right moment to launch as the sea breeze was starting to come in over the back. The queue on launch started growing, and there was more waiting as the wind was coming more regularly over the back.

Mark and Hamish were having a tremendous flight, but the rest of the pilots on launch were just heating up in all our gear, waiting for a decent cycle to come up the face. Gradually pilots at the back of the queue realised they weren’t going to get away anytime soon, so de-rigged.

As we stood on launch feeling a solid breeze on the back of our necks, we watched as Mark and Hamish flew past on their way up to the last turnpoint at East Takaka, then heard them call in as they made it to goal. Meanwhile, launch was closed so we couldn't get any other pilots off. So…the Task Committee set a good course, even if it’s not a valid task.

Stunning

On the way back in to Nelson, we stopped at the Takaka SE launch, with lots of pilots having a stunning glide down to the valley. Then off to the Sprig & Fern for a free barbie to end another great day.

Results: Highcloud PG Open Nelson Results