448... It's been awhile

                                                 Chilling with Angelica

Wow.!  It's been three weeks since my last flight.  The First week was for a good reason .  Dawn and I were sailing the Eastern Caribbean on the Carnival Cruise Ship Glory.  Then there was a high pressure area north of us that was encouraging a North East wind. It was blowing 10 to 20 mph constantly for more than a week.  Then, last week was my birthday Thanksgiving and the girls visit.  It blew so much that we didn't even go sailing.   Go Figure?  It's beautiful here in the winter and would be the best time of year to fly except for the wind.

Today was the first decent day in awhile.  Mike rallied the troops and we met at Placida about 4pm.  Lange and Otten were testing the air as I arrived.  They both landed when I pulled up.  It was still a bit thermic.

I took pity on Beau and brought him along.  Big mistake...... When the two Mikes decided to cruise over to Englewood Beach I had to content myself with staying near the patch so that I could check on Beau every once in awhile.  The wind was blowing about 8mph toward the Gulf,  I was cruising downwind a couple of miles and working my way back.  After being above 1000 feet for 15 minutes I decided to drop down and check on Beau.  After 3 loud "BEAUs", out he came, bouncing out from under the pickup.

I stayed up about 90 minutes and only landed because the sun had set and it was getting dark.

The Mikes showed up a few minutes later.   I didn't stay around to chew the fat due to mosquitos.