Thursday, May 8, 2014

In the WOG 2 company, the non-worked days will be made up !

Night session 6th to 7th of Mai, days 18-19
Distance today: 235 km
Total distance: 1260 km
Position : N71.938 W47.917, alt 2300 m 
Moving time : 12 hours

For the last 48 hours the aerological and climate conditions (-20°C and catabatic winds) have been favorable to us ; we feel that's something is happening ! We're fully into it ; condition are serious and we've had to take the decision to shift our pregression time over the night hours, so we can avoid the calm times of the middle of the day.
But the dropped down temperatures of the end of the day force us to be even more concentrated ; our preparation time before kiting is also getting longer. We've had to add down insulation layers to our Gore-tex shells, and neoprene boots are now over our ski boots for better insulation ; 2 balaclavas are fully protecting our faces. Of course big down mittens are necessary now...

We usually start the session with our "big weapons", as the catabatics are pretty nice in the beginning. We use a lot the Speed 19, which makes us progress really well for a good amount of kilometers. But as soon as the wind gets over 30km/h this is too much of a wing, and we have to switch for a smaller Speed 10. The switching process takes us a good 45 minutes, in the cold and the growing winds... Refreshing !
While standing in such colds we would be quiet happy tuse our storm wings, so quick to use. But the low temperature as well as the dryness of the air makes the snow difficult to slide on ; with our heavy pulkas we need to use bigger wings.

This first big day covers up for the "no wind" day that we had on sunday. Are we finally started ? We'll know better within the next days...

PS :
- Dear regards to all donators to the association WOG ; thanks Cecile and Pedro, thanks Corinne too, for all your encouraging messages :-)
-  Hi Pauline and Nolwenn ; we've passed tonight the latitude of Uummannaq, and left behind us the Store glacier, and the good memories of our sailing adventure on board of Gambo...
- Dedicated thanks to Johanna, Olivier, Alexis, Coralie and Alexandre ; the fine team of Carnet d'Aventures. We hope your readers also wander around our blog...

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