Together, then apart

 The soaring weather has been so crummy so far that we've begun grasping at straws.  Perhaps we should do that more often.

Last night the forecast for today was "mostly cloudy," which sounds a whole lot better than "rain all day."  Indeed, the sky was grey all morning.  But that didn't prevent the four desperados from showing up and rigging their gliders.

Here's a nice view of a completely unpromising sky:

Tim (BU), Greg (JR), Peter (HG), and DaveB (NT) launched in rapid succession (4 takeoffs in 21 minutes), and even though there were no shadows on the ground, they were able to stay up!

It is interesting to compare the flights of JR (red) and BU (cyan):

For the first half of the flight, they flew together, advising each other of climb rates and trying to stay out of each other's way in the haze.  They wandered across the river and found their first good climb over Mount Cube.  Then they split up and went their separate ways.

Tim eventually went back to Vermont and found a good thermal to 6000 feet.  He landed just after it started to get sunny on the ground.  A three hour flight, not bad!