BobW:

Yeah, I didn't start that last paragraph with the right word did I :-)

Thanks for the response - it answered a lot of questions I had!

Personally I practice spin and spiral recovery every year but I've never experienced an unintentional stall or spin in over 1000 hours of soaring. That is probably a result of the vast majority of those hours being spent ridge soaring very close to the mountains around Hope BC. Not much height for recovery if it happens so one tends to keep the airspeed higher than would be normal when thermalling with a few thousand feet between the glider and the ground.