Today marked my seventh consecutive unsuccessful attempt to get a jump since the beginning of January.
I stood a better shot of it today than any other day - I was up front on the second lift. The first lift had dropped and it was looking promising; the prevailing winds at the drop zone were 5 knots once you got down to tree level (although they were 30 knots at drop altitude!).
Getting in the plane for lift two, I weas optimistic since the wind had only picked up to eight knots.
On the approach, the winds gusted to 15 knots (two above peacetime allowable) and we started the required ten-minute wait until the next drop. We got about seven and a half minutes into the approach when the wind gusted to 15 again and we started another approach. Apart from the three times we circled over the Rockingham NASCAR Speedway (for want of any better place to go while waiting), it was a somewhat bumpy, albeit uneventful ride. After the second ten-minute warning, the jumpmaster team was instructed to land and unload the jumpers. The alternative would've been to stay in the air and unnecessarily hassle jumpers as they waited to exit.
Coming off, I spoke to the airborne commander (the overall leader in charge of the operation) and he was hearing from the drop zone "the winds have been reading 15.5 the last two readings." He rhetorically said "you think we should get the jumpers ready to go?"
For some reason, I started laughing uncontrollably. I think part of it was my answer to the question "do you think this'll get cancelled?" My quip back ended up being "I don't want to cause a panic if I come back and start derigging my shit."
Five jumps. That's all I really would like. How hard can it be?
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