Petra the 'Lift Magnet'

Click image for more pics!After landing with Yvonne, I met up with Petra and her young family who had come along to see her fly tandem.

On this the second round of the day, only Rick and Shabe were going to fly again while everyone else had had their flying tanks filled so the skies, presumably, would be pretty open. Charlie was still trying to make his way back from Chemainus.

There were still plenty of nice paraglider-pleasing clouds in the sky when we arrived on launch but the winds were much strong and calling for Main launch. I briefed Petra and we had an exciting, 'up-up-and-away' launch (I love those ones) and were soon looking down on the cairn from cloudbase.

Petra was pretty relaxed considering how quickly she'd left her family and terra firma behind and the views were, as per usual, to fly for (did I just coin that?!).

Shabe took Rick's KISS for another spin and I snapped a couple shots of him as he flew below us before heading out. Rick then pulled out his MUSTANG 2 and wasted little time climbing up to us, giving Petra another mind-bending perspective!

Video taken during Petra's tandem flight:

We thermalled around with Rick for a bit and then I noticed a bit of cloud suck so I pointed south and pulled ears. We continued going up at a steady rate and went into the 'white room' for a bit and so I executed some height loss turns to regain visibility.

Rick meanwhile, was still back at the cairn and said it was a sight to behold, seeing us spiral down from cloudbase!

By this point, Petra had experienced more than twice what the average tandem passenger does so we headed to the landing field. The thing I didn't know about her, however, was that she had the uncanny ability to attract lift in unexpected places: over the golf course ponds, away from clouds and the mountain, etc. so we were forced to float around in buoyant lift for another 15mins or so until finally landing smoothly together .

Her husband and kids were there to see it all. Great flying with you Petra!