First Task Underway & Opening Ceremony

Well, we are officially underway!
Yesterday a number of pilots took the day off. Tim and I drove to Lac St. Croix and around the area. It was still very hot! We returned in time for the opening ceremony, which was quite laid back: speeches by the local mayor, the president of the French Gliding Federation, and Roland Stuck, the Competition Director. Playing the FAI anthem, and of course, FOLK DANCING! There's always folk dancing at these occasions. These dancers were particularly cute and their performance appropriately short!
The weather for today looked weaker than the past few days have been. However, by launch time, the higher clouds had cleared. The original task was changed on the grid to reflect changing weather conditions. A pretty good crowd watched both on the screen in the meeting hangar and outside as the field circled near the start line. It was pretty exciting. Today, the 10 tracker units were randomly allocated, and both Tim and Chip have them. Tim also has the filming equipment on board, so his cockpit is pretty crowded!
The task is about 318 km, so we expect them back by about 5:30 (10:30 Central Time).
You can watch the live tracking at the official contest website - see link at right.

More news soon!
Susan