Ebey6897

Fort Ebey, June 8, 1997

Fort Ebey is a Washington State Park is located on the central west coast of Whidbey Island, in the Puget Sound. Predicting conditions suitable to paragliding here is notoriously tricky. On this particular day, conditions were very strong. I piloted my tandem paraglider with Teresa Carey as passenger. The below photos were shot from an altitude of 600'.

Above: Fort Ebey Launch Site

Above: Ed soars the ridge NW of launch. Speed bar on full!

From: Paul Klemond [SMTP:paul@kurious.org]

Sent: Monday, June 09, 1997 12:06 PM

To: nwpglide@Kurious.org

Subject: Weekend Warriors

Dan Heath gloats about a great flight at Rampart, then asks:

> So.... how did the Paddy Go Easy Expedition fare?

The Paddy Go Easy Expedition was disbanded Saturday evening due overwhelming good sense (NOT WIMPINESS) in the face of intimidating weather forecasts. The disbanded crew formed a new expedition, the Mt. Si Expedition. Sunday morning, that expedition was disbanded, and the same crew formed a third expedition: The Ebey Expedition. (Hold your snickering, it gets worse.)

Despite forecasts calling for gale-force winds in the Straight of Juan de Fuca, Ebey was annoyingly weak. Expedition disbanded, new expedition to Mont Blanchard. We hiked up. It was blown out. Expedition disbanded. New expedition back to Ebey. SUCCESS!

Stroming went first and sank out in moments. Bevis went next, crossed the gap and got up a few hundred feet, went backwards and scooted back to topland and find some ballast! PivotMan launch-potatoed for a while but could not be baited into the air. He yielded for Klemond & Carey on Tandem, who reversed, scratched across the dreaded gap and found the fountain of lift. They rapidly ascended to 600', where even on the very fast Flight Design Twin-2 tandem they made slow but very scenic headway soaring the ridge. From their perch they watched PivotMan hit the beach and battle the nastiest sand-slope hike back to launch. Twice.

We found zero-sink stretching for 1/4 mile out over the sound! 2 hours later, brave and talented locals Ed and Jim took to the skies and battled the strong conditions. Speed bars were popular. I put a couple photos from this flight on the web (see above). Two other good photos show a problem with the camera, Kodak's looking into it. http://www.kurious.org/problem-kodak.htm

Time to land the tandem: conditions near launch were very strong: 30 mph! I pulled ears to descend backwards. Dumping trim let me inch forwards but not good to descend into rotor over the flat areas with trim out -- begging for a collapse. We were running out of cleared LZ and considering turning down the coast toward fort ebey. At about 50' over land, the laminar jetstream broke and we descended fine.

Bevis and Stroming nabbed sunset hops. PivotMan ballasts up but wisely grounds his big thermal wing.

Next Episode: Paddy Go Easy is still beckoning!

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