Sometimes the moons align. Even better sometimes the isobars align, and we get good strong Westerlies.

Today was one of those days, here's this evenings forecast (lunchtimes was about the same, but is no longer available).

This morning Sefton did some repairs on gliders, and helped get things ready to fly, so thanks heaps Sefton! Also thanks to Richard for driving out specially to give us a tow.

A lot of water was going backwards

See the smoke bottom left

Being such a nice ridge day, I decided to attempt a 300km ridge task. From Gordon, to Thames and back, twice.

It all started out nicely but waiting for rain showers to pass slowed things down a lot. By 4pm I was only half way so abandoned the task. The showers, thermal streets and wave from the other side of the valley really made things interesting.

Looking up towards Coromandel, north of Thames

Just ducked past this monster on the way back from Thames

Jamie, Keith, Les, Carl, Brett and a trial flight or two also came out for a fly, sounds like everyone had a good time. Bad luck to Brett for missing the wave and landing at Tauranga!

Les noted there was up to 35knots wind at a few thousand feet. Good fun!

A lovely rainbow from Jamie in XP

The last day. And the weather just wasn't going to play ball.

Ominous weather

The decision was made to cancel today for both competitions, and tomorrow for the soaring centre competition due to the impending storm. Instead we ate lunch.

Bob doing what Bob does best.

And what a feast. Jan ordered a rather large ham, which was cooked to perfection and demolished to the bone.

Mauirce doing what Mauirce does best.

The hoards line up.

Three ladies doing what ladies do best.

Fin the task setter and fans.

After a large lunch including alcohol laden dessert, and lots of gossip (for the ladies), we turned our chairs for the prize giving.

The chairs have been turned.

Finally, it was time for some prizes. 

Tony Van Dyke

Patrick Driessen, 3rd in the fast class

Nigel McPhee, Winner Fast class

Lindsey Stephens, 2nd Fast Class

Jan Mace, winner of a trophy for the person that made the competition most enjoyable and successful.

Tim Bromhead, winner Sports Class, and the PW5 trophy.

Marucie Honey, winner of the fastest flight.

Robin Britton, winner of the most Meritorious flight awards.

Ruth doing what Ruth does best.

High cloud isn't ideal.

That's what many of the 8 pilots who landed out were thinking, as they sat around chewing grass.

It was a tough day, there were well marked thermals but they just weren't as strong as some needed thanks to the thin layer of high cloud.

The webcam at 4:21 today. Not many gliders back yet... Note that darn high cloud up high.

There was drama abound as normally top pilots landed in paddocks. For Patrick Driessen in the fast class, the day proved less than satisfactory with only 370 points. The past four days he has won the day for 1000 points. Although Nigel hasn't won a day, he has won 800-980 points each day. It really shows what a tight and fierce competition it's been between the top pilots. Consistency paid off and he's come off with the most points in total so far. Totals for fast class can be found here. Todays winner was Lindsey Stephens, well done.

The same happened in the Sports class. Maurice Honey won 6 of the 9 days, but had one or two bad days allowing Tim to cling to the lead without winning a single day. Totals for sports class here. Well done to Maurice for winning the day again.

The club class has a clear winner so far, with Bryan O'Brien winning every day. Totals for club class here. 

Don't forget you can browse through those results to see:

• Day scores
• Total scores on a particular day
• Tasks for the day, including a nice little map.

Tomorrow looks like a 70% chance of not flying due to the weather closing in on us, so that might be the end of the competitions. We'll update everyone tomorrow.

Another wonderful day of gliding. Weather was forecast for strong thermal activity starting early, and indeed it did. It wasn't quite as easy as it looked however, and things changed quickly and on reasonably large scales. What was a leg of strong thermals one minute, could change to a big overdevelopment the next, or a sea breeze could come in and make a big hole.

There were 4 landouts today, including Bob Gray landing out somewhere down south, getting back around 9pm this evening. The turn points for the fast class were Maramarua and Tihoi, making the task a decent 331km.

Sports class had 2 of the 5 competitors get around the task from Morrinsville to Tokoroa. The winner of the day was Robin Britton again. Well done Robin, not only did she win, but she showed us all how to do it properly, with a GPS track that puts the rest of us to shame. Most of us wobbled around the course, searching for lift under the clouds as best we could, while Robin went in an almost straight lines around the whole thing! Here is Tim's track (blue) and Robins track (red) which shows what we mean.

Robins track Red, Tim's track blue.

Thanks to Maurice landing out (and Robin for missing a day!) your intrepid author has taken the lead for the sports class. Note to see the total scores so far, view the results page below, then click "total" along the top.

Big pat on the backs to Patrick Driessen (again!) and Bryan O'Brien (again!) for winning fast and club classes respectively.

Results for fast class 

Results for club class

Results for sports class

Looks like another good day tomorrow, until then...

Well another boomer of a day. It started off gloomy yet again, with a cold front and showers passing overhead around 11am. By 1pm things were looking much better, the thermals started kicking off and didn't stop till late afternoon, enabling tasks to be set.

David summarises the weather for us like no other. Remotely from Auckland too. It's almost like he's here with us.

Thermals ended up big and powerful, a few streets, big gaps between, the odd shower, and inevitably the odd landout. 4 in total, out of an now-up-to 27 competitors.

A big congrats to Robin Britton, being the only Sports class competitor to make it around the task again! Edouard and Sandy landed back while Maurice and Tim landed in paddocks around the countryside. Maurice landed early giving the others a chance to catch up with some points, making the competition a little more interesting. Full scores for sports class here.

Tim's handy tip of the day: don't go looking for lift behind a rain cloud.

Also well done to Bryan O'Brien who took out Club class yet again, and Patrick Driessen (again!) and Trevor Terry who tied for first place for the Fast class. Unusual, but can happen due to the handicap system. Full scores for club class here, and fast class here.

Looks like another really good day tomorrow, looking forward to it already.

A stunning morning with Maurice chomping at the bit to get going.

Closeup of the view without Maurice. Sorry Maurice.

Dave decided to bring in half his glider to get his flight off the GPS. Yes that's a headrest.

The morning started with a grim weather report. The tephigrams didn't look promising at all, wind minimal, and generally not very impressive. It didn't take long to work out David Hirst accidentally sent us last Monday's forecast, and today was in-fact going to be a cracker!

And indeed it was a real boomer. Although there were westerlies, they weren't very strong so the day was primarily a thermal day. Sports class were given a 170km speed task, with club and fast classes given a 200-400km AAT task, with 20 and 25km circles respectively.

It was a long day, but everyone made it around without landing out. There were a number of saves from low down.

Keith Irvine was on hand to take some photos of the finishes with his super zoom lens, thanks Keith

Watering the big field in the sky

The welcoming committee were applauding people as they arrived.

Delta Xray with Nigel doing a fly-through

Results are available here for sports class, here for fast, and here for club class. Well done to Maurice Honey, Brian O'Bryan, and Patrick Driessen. (Hmmm that's almost the same as yesterday...)

All in all a great day. The ridge was just working, thermals were OK, combine the two and you shoot up like a rocket. David Hirst submitted a weather forecast from Auckland and it came out pretty bang on.

A promising start to the morning.

The day in numbers:

3 Tasks for 3 classes
5 Landouts
22 Competitors
1 Wheel up landing (Bill couldn't get his gear down, but it's all fixed now) 
Number of restarts: quite a few! 

The Matamata Soaring Centre competition is now on, as well as the Sports Class Nationals, making 22 competitors total, and lots of people flying up and down the ridge.

The tasks today were set to 3 hours AAT tasks, a number of people found it tough going, getting low. 

Well done to Nelson Badger for starting, landing at Te Aroha, getting back to the airfield quick with Les, then restarting the task again. Quite a few others restarted the task also after getting too low, or stuffing it up somehow. Nelson ended up landing around 6:30pm.

Congrats to Bryan O'Brien for winning Club Class, Maurice Honey for winning Sports Class and Tony Van Dyke for the Fast Class. Click the class for the full results of today on Soaring Spot.

The webcam is now up and running again on the front page for those who want to check what things are up to. It stops occasionally and needs to be restarted manually so apologies for when it does stop.

A startled Bill & Bob at morning briefing. They had just received the task for the day.

Ross Taylor in GPV on ground roll

Arriving back, tying down, and still clouds in the sky

Mmmm meat, Captain Dom & dad at the helm.

We didn't fly yesterday's Soaring Centre practice day due to the rain. Instead we sat around taking pictures of rainbows. And here they are!

Good for the farmers at least

The rainbow as promised.

"Look the rainbow goes from there...

...to there!"