Lefkara land out

Well Dave suggested that today 19 Jun 2010 would be a corker at Lefkara and we should meet at the landing field!  I agreed and packed my glider into the car and headed out to the site arriving there around 10:25.  I put my feet up and caught some much needed z's whilst I waited for the others, this was due to just finishing a 24 hour duty at work and only have 4 hours sleep.  By the time they arrived I had woken up and felt as though I was ready for a nice days flying.  We left the Galaxy in the landing field and headed to the top in the red rocket.  at the top the wind was perfect though it was apparent that the strength was increasing steadily all the time.  Dave went first, followed by me then Tim and finally Mark.  We flew together for about 40 minutes and both Tim and Dave gained some amazing height and went on short cross country flights and back.  Due to my low airtime I stuck near to the hill and managed to climb to 1230m which gives me my next goal of flying above 1500m
I flew around a little enjoying my height but then found I was in a world of sink.  at around 750m I turned to find the lift I had originally climbed in but only found a small pocket and decided to try over by the Heli pad! this was my big mistake. now quite low over the saddle I quickly found I was in the lee of it and the pimple, the air was turbulent and I fought to keep the glider stable but the wing collapsed on the left hand side which swung me around a bit then it collapsed on the right hand side and by now I was looking to land "But where?" I thought all I could see was trees.  It took a couple of minutes but I did manage to find a couple of nice clear patches with a track running between.  Due to the lack of penetration I didn't manage to reach either of these patches and instead landed on the track between.  I wish I'd had a helmet Cam to capture it all!  You can find my track log here
Well now I had a decision to make.  Head West up the near vertical hill back to launch about 2km or head SW and skirt the greek military base around the pimple and back to my car roughly twice the distance but on the flat.  Well I thought I did not want to go anywhere near the military base so I opted to retrieve the Red Rocket from the top.  I had 2 bottles of water in my bag so what more would I need?  Well the hill quickly became very steep and was covered in lose shale so my feet would slip on every step.  I trudged from shady spot to shady spot and every time I move to the next spot my ruck sack would catch on the branches of the very low short trees sapping what little energy I had.  It took me around an hour to reach the top where I stole a can of Pepsi and a Mars bar out of Tim's cool box.  Cheers Tim!
Big lesson to learn from this flight is do not fly to the Heli Pad if you're only at 750m as this puts you into the lee of the saddle!  and definitely don't fly into the lee of any hills.  I can now say this with authority! ;)