Wynd’s wish for wind

FORMER AFL player Jim Wynd is again gearing up to fulfil his dream of becoming the second person ever to make the return trip from Jan Juc to Apollo Bay by hang glider.

Playing 137 games for Fitzroy and retiring from the game in 2002, he’s spent the last 20 years flying the coast including 40 trips from the Surf Coast to Apollo Bay, but he’s yet to make it down and back in one journey.

Mr Wynd came close three years ago, with Jan Juc his destination conditions forced him to land at Anglesea.

“We just haven’t had the wind do what we want to do since then,” he said.

“We need an easterly to get from Jan Juc to Apollo Bay, which happens about five flyable days a year, and then to get back you need the wind to swing around to the southeast, and it needs to happen at the right time.”

The one person to have made the successful return leg, Mr Wynd said, is one of the Victoria’s premier flying instructors Rowan Holtkamp.

“He has been flying since he was a child, a very experienced, fantastic pilot…so I don’t feel that bad.”

On a good day at the Bells Beach launch site where he and friends routinely leave for Apollo Bay from, there’ll be up to a dozen pilots taking off.

“Not everyone gets down there, it’s a really technical flight, because you need the wind hitting the coastline to give you the lift and there’s about four parts along the way where you have no lift.”

“It’s all about the cliffs, the way they face and the wind direction, plus cloud height.”

The average trip takes two to three hours depending on conditions, with the fastest time set at one hour and 17 minutes and the slowest being six hours.

The pilots will sometimes pay for a driver to follow as support and to pick them all up, failing that whoever is first forced to land has to hitch hike back to the cars.

“Then they have to make the long journey back from Bells to pick up the other pilots who are gloating about what a wonderful day they’ve had,” Mr Wynd chuckled.

Watching the weather every day, its during spring and into summer when the easterly winds necessary to the journey start picking up and he gets excited by weather patterns that make the return leg possible.

“We’re hoping in the next two months, somewhere around September/October, and through to February is when we get the most chances.”