Friday June 27, 2008

Our last race day, and our most difficult weather wise. The forecast the night before predicted poor visibility early in the morning, so we slept a little later. When we arrived at Franklin Airport, many of the racers had already left. I got the weather which was not promising, and we got more gas. Usually we only take enough gas for one leg and stop and refuel, but today we wanted to do a flyby and continue flying to Mansfield. The weather forecast was calling for T storms later in the day. We took off and flew our time line flyby to start the clock and then we settled down for the flight. The question of the day was "should we climb above the clouds, or slog around in poor visibility below them. We opted to fly above them, and eventually only had small holes where we occasionally saw the ground. As we got nearer to Saratoga Springs we could hear many of the racers on the frequency asking how the weather was along the route. One of the aircraft had to reverse course as the clouds and mountains tops were coming together and they went back to where they could climb above them. We held out above the clouds till we were almost at Saratoga Springs, and then the cloud deck began to drop away below us. We eased down with them and when the sky cleared we were about 20 miles out. We did our fly by at Saratoga Springs, and continued to Mansfield MA. Weather wasn't as bad for us on that leg, although we kept calling ASOS and AWOS frequencies to listen to what weather they were reporting along our route. Again the weather was okay at the destination and we finished our race. As the day lengthened many of the racers arriving later said the weather was getting worse as they did the Saratoga to Mansfield leg. Only one team didn't make it out of Saratoga Springs, the weather was too bad to continue. They were automatically disqualified as they didn't reach the terminus by 5PM on Friday. Another team started the night before from Franklin and couldn't get to Saratoga Springs for their flyby and had to file a flight plan to get into Mansfield. They were also disqualified. Yet another team that started the night before from Franklin had to file a flight plan and land in Albany and spend the night, which disqualified them. Much of this is luck with the weather. We had pretty good luck with weather, but not much when our handicap was assigned. We protested it, but I doubt it will change much. It kept our score down, but not our spirit: we enjoyed this race enormously. We are better pilots for having flown it, and we recognize how it changed us forever as people by our facing the challenges it presented. We are proud of ourselves for finishing.. I would recommend it to any pilot to try. We were picked up from the hotel at 6:30 by Paul of our host family. Paul, and Jennifer, Arianna 5, Benson 3 and Grandmom, Lynn who let us entertain them with tales of the race, which we were happy to supply and fed us a sumptous meal. We offered to let the children sit in the airplane on Saturday for pictures. They picked us up and took us to the airport. The airport had an aviation day going all day with music, rides and lots of food. After that we offered the kids a chance to swim in "our" pool. Right now the children are swimming with Mom while I write this blog and Mary and Paul watch them. We have a "meet the racers Lobster bake" tonight back at the airport and a dance under the stars after that. The whole town
is in on the act with the race terminus being there. They make us feel like celebrities!