The 12th Annual Grand Strand Pattern Classic turned out to be quite exciting inspite of threatening skys. The weather forecast the prior week was somewhat iffy. Saturday was to be cool and windy wtih a 30% chance of thundershowers. The local weathermen changed their predictions for the coming weekend almost daily.

As it turned out Friday was the best ot the three days, which was great for the "early bird" contestants. We had fourteen contestants registered by Friday evening. It's alway exciting to see such a good turnout on the practice day before a contest.

Everyone is in good mood, happy to see old friends and anxious to start a new season. Everyone claimed that they had not practiced over the winter, but no one was believing their stories.

It never rained on Saturday, but the temperature was in the mid-fifties and the wind was 15 -25 mph out of the North East; meaning it was quartering in from the right. It made for some challenging flying conditions, but it favored no one. We gained three more pilots, on Saturday, for a total of seventeen contestants.

Inspite of the challenging flying conditions we got in four rounds on Saturday, followed by a fantastic Pig Pic'n feast that evening. Blaire Page did the honors this year, by stepping up to the situation of flying and cooking a pig for dinner. Robbie Buffkin, our regular chef, went through a triple bypass heart surgery three weeks prior to the contest. Robbie had every intention of cooking the pig as well as competing, but that was somewhat optimistic on his part.

Take it from one who has been there and knows, it's easy to think you can do all sorts of things after heart surgery, but it is a little much. You feel energetic because you have renewed blood capacity flowing through your veins, but you tend to forget that you've just been split open from gizzard to navel and it does take awhile for the "ole bod" to recover from that. At any rate thanks to Blaire for stepping up to the task and it was great to see Robbie at the event.

The weatherman missed the rain prediction by a day. It never happened on Saturday, but it certainly did on Sunday. The radar showed a band of rain from Columbia, SC covering Green Sea directly and continued to the east out to sea. It was pretty obvious that it wasn't going to let up. And, beside the rain, the wind picked up another 5 mph and the temperature dropped another 10 degrees.

From the four rounds completed on Saturday is was also pretty clear that the way everyone was flying no major changes in positions were about to happen. The first places were locked up in every class; and second and third places looked pretty fixed. Thus, it was without much adieu that everyone agreed to pack it in and head for home. Ken Velez from Delware had already made the decision to go back to the North were it was drier and no doubt warmer.

Check out the "Photo Gallery" for pictures by Fred Johnson.

The final results are listed below: