The rain started developing behind me, luckily. From then on it was easy all the way to Taft, staying between 6K to 7.5K the whole way. The lift occasionally was 10 knots! But once I got to the end of the valley I couldn't cross the mountains over the grapevine, since cloud base was below the peeks for the most part. I had to go around and glide through the pass to Tehachapi from 6500 feet with a marginal glide to the gliderport. 

At some point I was thinking I will need to make a 20 knots downwind landing at Tehachapi, but managed to climb back from less than 1000 feet AGL. However cloud base at Tehachapi was only 3000 AGL (no surprise with all the snow in the valley floor) and took me long time to get to it. It was again tough to glide low over the windmills into the Mojave desert from this altitude. The Mojave desert was all washed out with wind and no lift. I glided as far as I could all the way to the edge of the restricted zone, but couldn't go around it with 2000 AGL, no lift and 20 knots west wind... So I turned around and landed in the furthest strip I could get to - Pontious, which is between Mojave and Rosamond. My GPS showed 226 miles from Hollister, which is a new Hollister record, and according to Emil, this is the first flight to Mojave from any Bay Area site (including Sky Sailing) that he knows of. 

I landed shortly after 6PM, after 7 hours flight. Mike Deleo and Emil arrived with my trailer 15 minutes later. What a crew! 

Ramy Yanetz LS4a "TG" 

GPS Trace click image to enlarge (781k)	3d trace click image to enlarge (900k)
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Topo USA Map click image to enlarge