28.7.2013 Sunday – 1st competition day
As usual, I had breakfast at the restaurant terrace (alone). Suddenly I felt like there was a drop on my hand, but didn’t believe it would be rain. Soon I collected my plate and ran inside as suddenly short but heavy rain shower fell down. I think I heard some thunder as well. Air mass felt quite moist, and I asked Wojtek are we going to fly today. I was thinking would pilots have to fly in between the thunderstorms. Wojtek said that of course we are flying.
Briefing started 9.30, half an hour earlier than usual. We went through all the procedures and Dick said few words of the safety, reminding everybody that people should remember also the loved ones, how hard it would be to them if something serious did happen. Well spoken.
Towings – postponed
The air mass had changed quite rapidly and at the time when towings were supposed to start (at 12.00), the sky was clear and temperature close to +30. Some high cloud (I would say overcast) was lurking in the horizon and affecting the task area. So the towings were postponed quite many times 15 to 30 minutes at a time. Practically we were stuck in the grid and trying to find shadow. I sat for awhile with team Italy and we remembered JWGC2009 and Räyskälä. Silva, people still remember you – in a good way – and many people have said that JWGC2009 was so far the best JWGC. Let’s see how things are after Leszno ;-)
More people than usual hang out with UK team glider, as “the party animals” Ali and Ben arrived yesterday evening. It seems that they are like magnets, if you know what I mean.
New shorter tasks were given to team captains, and temperature was rising to too hot for me. I had to take the trick in use which I learned in Sudan: wet a towel and wrap it around your head. It helps really. And thank you team Lithuania for giving me a space under your umbrella, it would be great to have one of you as my assistant so I could walk around in the shadow but use both hands for shooting photos.
Even it was hot, I heard that it wasn’t hot enough, as the temperature should have got 4 degrees higher for thermals to start. The sniffer plane (SZD-54-2 Perkoz) was towed three times in the air before he could find anything than “positive zero”. After more than two hours of waiting the task for club class was cancelled, some 20 minutes later the standard class task was cancelled as well. No flying today.
But it seems that grid and weighing worked well, so this was good practice. Of course it would have been better if competitors could have started the championships with good flying day, I think it would break the ice.
Today I got a new member in the website team, Jan Jawornik will write the facebook stream, take photos and write news on Polish site.
Evening
In the evening I saw few – mostly Austrian guys – walking on a rope, which was installed between two trees and not very high (luckily) close to the camping area gate. After a short walk around the camping area, Michael was lying on the ground with ice on his knee and someone asked if I knew is there a doctor at the airfield. I called to Wojtek, he said that only doctor is at the city and we can call to emergency. Guys were laughing already, so I thought the situation must not be too bad.
Then I found myself sitting by the volleyball yard (in the audience) with one Swiss (Gregory) and one Norwegian (Alex) who were first talking French together, but changed in English when I arrived. I had a taste of Swiss wine and heard how widely wine is made in Switzerland. That was quite surprising actually, as when I buy wine, I don’t see separate Swiss section at liquor shop.
Edit: Alex is quite interesting combination: he is living in Switzerland, flying for Norway team with French glider and has crew from Switzerland. Quite international, isn’t it.
After the volleyball game, we decided to have dinner together, which was great as I don’t like eating alone. We ended up with French team at the terrace. And there we were, Norwegian, Swiss and French guys speaking French together, I was missing the subtitles, as only French I understand is food vocabulary and “merde”. They told stories, and then said that nothing was worth translating, and laughed. Hmh.
Then I realized something. I realized why UK team is so popular. It’s because of their language. Other English speaking countries like Australia, USA (and South Africa) have smaller teams, so it’s easy for them to join the UK team, as everybody can speak their own language. Also UK team is big on its own, so they have lots of space at their camping and so there is always space for visitors. And if you spend time with those teams who don’t speak English by birth, they are forced to change the language in English, if they want to make the visitor to feel comfortable. I don’t want to force anybody to speak the language they don’t want to speak.
So that might be one of the reasons why there are some groups which are usually spending time together, the groups are divided by the language, French, German and English…and of course the atmosphere is one big reason as well.
But still I would like to encourage people – also the French – to speak with other teams than their own. Perhaps you might get new friends and become more confident in English language. Well, you might think why that common language should be English…if I could decide, we all would speak Finnish 
In the evening we all got SMS message “Meteo warning: dissipating storm may create wind gusts of 75 km/h about 3-6 AM”. Swiss team put their drinks in the restaurant fridge and went into the darkness to de-rig their glider. Quite brave actually, as they told me when they came back that there were millions of mosquitoes waiting for them.
I woke up at night and could see the coming storm as there were lightning, but no sound yet. I didn’t hear the storm after that, except that one in the morning around 9.