Nationals - Day 2

[billvon 3,120]

4-way ended today - and the weather held off just long enough to get the final jumps in. We made the final 3 jumps by noon. By about 2pm high clouds started to build, and by 3pm the winds started to kick up enough that we scrubbed off an 8-way practice jump.

This morning the start time was 8am, which everyone agreed was a much more civilized start time. (For one thing, the sun rose before we got to the DZ, so the drive there wasn't in the dark.) The meet went as smoothly as yesterday, but much more slowly - they were now adding CRW rotations into the mix, so every second or third load was a CRW load that took aircraft from the 4-way competition. We had about two hours between rounds.

We had two jumps today that were good illustrations of the highs and the lows you can get during a competition like this. Our last jump last night included a cataccord exit. We aren't very good at the longer exits, and the exit didn't quite funnel but did buck and toss enough to cost us 3-4 seconds, which at our pace means we lose at least a point or two. The first jump this morning started with a bundy launch, which is very similar to the cataccord. We jammed it up a good half dozen times, and Molly got so much advice on how to pull off the exit that at one point she had to tell people her head was full, and she didn't need any more suggestions.

We were all nervous in the plane, and we lined up the exit expecting the worst. I was expecting to have to drop off, and the front half was expecting to not get a clean launch. Pat gave the count, we launched and - perfect launch. I think we lost a few seconds just staring at each other, thinking "is there a problem I'm not seeing? Because it looks perfect." Then we got on with the dive.

After we landed, we guessed we got an 11, maybe a 12. When they posted the scores we got a 13. Molly was ecstatic, running around hugging everyone. What might have been our worst dive ended up being a relatively high scorer for us.

The next dive was mostly randoms, with a block we're good at. We had a bad grip that cost us two point to fix, and after the review we lost another two points to a video bust. What should have been one of our best dives turned into our lowest score for the meet.

And so it went. In the end we met both our goals - we didn't come in last, and we got a better than 10 point average for our first season together.

After 4-way ended we spent a few hours in the bent prop, talking about the season and having a few beers with the other teams in the meet. The 8-way draw came out at 6pm and we dirt dove for about an hour, getting ready for tomorrow. (Although it's likely we'll have a weather day tomorrow; rain expected.)