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7 November 2025


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GRATULACJE RyBa !!!
GRATULACJE WRmirekd !! FELICITATIONS blackcat !

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Commentary

No offence intended, but if only Erwin Rommel had been of Prussian descent and better still Ferdinand von Zeppelin as well, then maybe our Polish friends might have been able to offer some sort of explanation for their dirigible desert dominance in our experimental race from the banks of the White Nile to the banks of the Chari, and not a drop of water in between. But Rom and Zep were Wuertembergers and RyBa, WRmirekd and garent finished 1st, 2nd and 4th anyway, kept from a clean-podium-sweep appropriately enough by blackcat from France, the nation that founded Fort Lamy later to become N'Djamena. Well done, all!

And yes, the experiment worked. A sleight of hand in defining the topography tiles that create our charts makes the race engine ignore all land/water boundaries, so that our balloons float everywhere, except over the edge of our chart world. Moreover, we also learned that desert wind is highly variable, diurnal perhaps, so that unfavourable winds and favourable winds follow each other with some regularity, giving your average balloonist a better chance of getting to There, eventually. Unlike, for example on the Indian Ocean where once the monsoon settles down, patience turns to petrifaction.

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SYC Ranking

  1. Sailonline Yacht Club Member KaSToR
  2. Sailonline Yacht Club Member WRmirekd
  3. Sailonline Yacht Club Member CriticalHippo
  4. Sailonline Yacht Club Member rafa
  5. Sailonline Yacht Club Member rumskib
  6. Sailonline Yacht Club Member Sax747
  7. Sailonline Yacht Club Member vida
  8. Sailonline Yacht Club Member bonknhoot
  9. Sailonline Yacht Club Member Kipper1258
  10. Sailonline Yacht Club Member Panpyc

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