Very windy conditions continue throughout Puerto Rico and mostly on the north coast. Again, the only option were to go to the South. But not only that, but you have to get there very early in the morning to get the flight. We returned to the Sanchez family lands in PR116 of the Lajas Valley. As expected, the conditions were good for flying. Without a doubt, the only place in Puerto Rico that you could fly. Today was a short but intense day of flights.
From early on and because it was already a weekend, pilots arrived from all over the island. The most notable of them was Eduardo Pabon who traveled all the way from Barceloneta. A road trip of more than 2 hours to reach Lajas and not only that. He was the first to arrive, and the first to launch. Chey Sánchez, Antonio Arias (he had stayed in the western area to be early in the place), Luis Ruiz, Patrick Wendt, Jose Sanchez Sr., and their sons Joselito and Damian also arrived early. There were several pilots who could not make the trip, and we understand that the sacrifice is great.
The first to launch was Eduardo. His route was to fly over La Parguera, where he took great photos and video. He was followed by Damian, Joselito and Antonio, who had a new paramotor and it was also the first time he made a Front Launch at zero wind, and made it with excellence. Dimas followed them a little later.
In the meantime, José Sr., made a takeoff in his Trike Xenit and unfortunately developed a pendulum in the takeoff attempt that caused damage to his propeller, so he could not launched. The instructor Luis was talking with José, making the corresponding explanations so that this does not happen again.
Luis could not go out to fly. He tried to fly in Tandem with Patrick, using a Trike with Simonini engine of 28 HP. They just did not have the engine power and lacked of track length. Also the wind at zero complicated the things. Chey Sánchez also faced problems with his inflation technique in zero wind and decided not to fly.
We were amaze by the skill of Antonio, who was flying for almost 2 hours, all around, and at different heights, knowing his new equipment and enjoying his flight to the fullest. With a Dimas flight at 9 AM we closed the day’s flight activities. Patrick took advantage of the rise in wind intensity at about 9:15 AM to practice hard the inflation of the paraglider. He practiced some Front Launch and some Reverse Launch. At both ways he managed very well. We ended up taking a breakfast together with the idea of monitoring if it was possible to fly later in the day at Anasco. This was not possible. A storm of winds and rain continues to surround the entire island. With the flights of today Antonio and Joselito, jump their level of flight to 2 stars. Congratulations!!!💪💪