Grants 10/13 2nd shift, 6.0/7.0M

[kenonstott]

St. Marks owned me the day before so I missed John’s great session. But as soon as they got done with me on Tuesday I was off in a hurry. I shouldn’t have been in a rush. John was ripping on his 5.7 when I got there and while I rigged but it died back to 7.0 wind shortly after I started. John headed off to be with Karen and I started milking the windlines with the 7.0. It wasn’t long before I had to switch to the S-type to hang on in the rips but still float in the schlogs. About 3 out of every 4 afternoons at Grants have turned into a bust so I was considering leaving. But Penny called at 2:00 and said there was a high wind warning issued for Tooele County. I looked at Burmester to see if the south/north switch was occurring and Burmester was at 27 from the south. Wow! I canceled all thoughts of leaving as the 1st +30 gust hit and the wind filled back in. I wish I had rigged the 5.5 but the 6.0 Infinity coupled with the 85L Sonic was providing the screaming reaches and adrenaline rush I crave. With the lake so far down there are shadows at both shores which I used to keep from getting killed in the turns. I only bailed out of 5 turns for preservation. I ended up doing carpal tunnel jibes for a lot of the peak gusts (carpal tunnel wrists can’t handle oversheeting pressure, let go of the back hand, concentrate on surfing the board around with the sail straight down wind, grab the boom again and take off). The SW wind angle stretched out the reaches and instant planong helped to provide maximum wild rides. I quit at 4:45 when it went to 4.7 conditions. I was tempted to rig the 4.7 and Hi Tech but I already had 3 boards and 2 sails at the water. Throughout the day it stayed in the low 70’s; not bad for the middle of October. It was also bright and sunny until 3:00 and didn’t threaten any rain until I was leaving at 5:30. When John left I was left to share the lake with 3 guys chasing crawdads. This rated as one of the 4 best Grants days this year. The 4.5 hours on the water left me on life support but I was still grinning ear to ear.

[DimitriMilovich]

Ken, some years ago I was in Costa Rica at Lake Arenal. The day started really windy, then it nuked. I stayed out about 20 minutes on a 3.2 and that was all I could handle - it was pure survival. The local instructors and hot residents, who knew these conditions inside and out, got blown off the water after about an hour or so. All the windmills had long since shut down.

There were only two people left sailing. One was a burly top Canadian retail shop owner who clearly could sail anything anywhere. The other was his buddy who was the Canadian National Slalom or Race champ or something. One or both of them were doing jibes like you said, letting go of the back hand and letting the sail "flag" out in the turns, steering around riding the waves downwind through the jibe while they held onto the mast and switched stance, then sheeting in and heading out again. They were on 3.0's or 3.5's if I remember right. Pretty cool to watch. You're clearly onto something there.