Just came back from my dropzone in Portugal (Evora) with a mixed feeling of happiness and frustration. First things first: My best friend and jumps partner had his first cutaway today. On his first jump of the day! Talk about crazy luck. One of the cells on his canopy did not fully inflate, even after he pulled some 360s and full break-release maneuvers. The solution: The old saying "In skydiving, in case of doubt, there are no doubts"; cutaway and deploy the reserve. Turns out there were some holes in that specific cell that did not allow it to inflate. All went well, thankfully and he carried on jumping with a different canopy. One important thing in sports, and anything you learn for that matter, is that you should always end the day (training) with a positive experience. And the rest of his day went fine :)

As for me, did I mention the sky was almost 100% cloud coverage? Well, turns out that being the first to jump from the plane - on a clouded sky - vastly increases you chances of not being that close to the landing zone when you deploy your main. That, along with the fact that I pushed myself to only deploy after clearing the clouds (around 3500 feet), made me open right above a nice forest of pine trees. As a side-note, 2 weeks ago I did the same with an open sky and ended up landing outside the airfield. We are supposed to learn from these experiences, but apparently I'm a slow learner in this respect. Anyways, I used the trick of pulling the rear cables of the chute (and keep pulling them) to gain some more horizontal ground and it worked; managed to land inside the airfield, though far far from the hangar. Wasn't a bad landing, but a sudden rush of side wind brought me to the ground with my hands. Thank goodness for the gloves I *always* wear :D

The second jump was perfect. Second to leave the aircraft, so much closer to the airfield, deployed around 3500 feet again - after training some transitions of belly-to-earth to back-to-earth and the other way around. The landing was just purely perfect. Tip of my feet ;)

Now, by the third jump of the day, the wind started picking up speed. My canopy would not move forward (at all) when facing it. I had, however, the intention of landing past the runway so I calculated the point where I should be for a proper landing but almost barely missed it (only made it because of pulling the rear cables again). So, above the landing spot I defined, I start descending (but not moving forward - remember, strong wind). When I finally reach feet-on-the-ground altitude, another rush of wind pulls my chute back and before I managed to pull one of the controller cables I was already being dragged in the direction of the runway!! Did I mention the airplane was landing in that exact same moment? It must have missed me by 3 meters and it actually aborted it's landing, not even touching down. Damn, that was freaking scary. But that's how we learn.

Conclusions and mental notes:

With strong winds, always be directly above the landing spot around 500 feet. It's better to go sideways until needed, if needed; If in doubt about making it to a landing spot, abort and land in the safest area that is close by; Again, if being the first out of the plane (since the plane generally drops us up wind) open earlier that normal (4000 feet min).