provo harbor, utah lake state park, Thursday, 8.31

[Carl Christensen]

Absolutely rock solid wind for 4 hours. No puffs, no lulls. I hit the road at 4pm even though Bluffdale wasn't quite hitting the magic dozen because I could see caps on the cam with nothing resembling thunderclouds anywhere.

Mike R showed when I was rigging but left, without going out, to attend to other obligations; very responsible. He's hoping for a repeat today and there is a good chance, we'll see. Where was Rick H? John needs to tell Jim, he'll be all over it. Don't go unless there the Provo Airport hits 12 or so. That's all you need. If it hits the high teens smaller boards work with 5-6m2 sheets.

Mike, I ended up throwing my gear in the river right there 10 ft from my van, walking chest deep 10 yds west in the river, uphauling from there, (when will I remember the uphaul for that 9.0? it's getting old pulling the thing up by the mast) and sailing out, no problem. Instant planing. One reach out and back on the Hypersonic brought me all the way upwind to the mouth of the harbor and the ends of the jetties.

The rest of the folks launched by the rental shack on the forebay. Tom and Josh made it out into open water. One easy way to do that is to stand on the bottom and walk your gear up the inside of the west jetty to the harbor mouth and then take off from there.

As for the wind, it was very, very smooth. And, as Josh noted, the swell was, well, swell. It jump starts a planing ride and gives you contours to work, something you don't really get at any of the usual Utah launches. My board popped up and planed non-stop from the minute it hit the lake until I came back inside the jetties just before 8pm with hot spots on my hips from my harness, my feet from pushing my fin, and my hands from holding on too tight.

So, yes, that probably was me Dimitri saw and, yes, it was a perfect evening. And I rode my workhorse 9.0 Windwing. If it were lighter wind a 9.8, 11.0, 11.7 or 12.5 would still get me blasting; lots of room to go larger. The Roberts would have absolutely loved it. It is amazing to me that you could see me moving because from that high things look like they are stuck to the water. Good eye though.

Overall a very pleasant sailing experience, very satisifying. It really reset my whole clock. There were more than a few reaches where everything was so set that nothing had to move and it almost felt like it wasn't real. Provo is a new re-discovery. Unlike Saratoga it is more solid and usually seems to blow all the way to sundown. I usually quit before it does.

[jason morton]

Jesse got the late award at ssb. He still hadn't come off the water at 9 pm as I was heading out. Dean is usually the last guy off the water.

[RickHeninger]

Where was Rick H?

Carl...

I am looking into this new idea that I haven't been looking into all that much this summer... WERK or WORK something er another... It might be an acronym of some sort... But it's this thing where you go and do hard things and they give you these peices of paper. You then can take those green little peices of paper up to Hood River and give it to the guy and they'll give you windsurfing equipment. I hear you can even get rid of the green papers through mail ordering stuff too!

Actually, I was at the David Mathews concert the night before and it was soo windy out at the USANA amphitheater that the acoustics were a little compromised, so I thought it was going to be really windy thursday but I guess didn't pan out quite as much as I thought it would...

Tuesday and Wednesday I put in quite a few hours of great sailing at Grantville reservoir that I was actually sore yesterday... Imagine that... Sore from water time in Utah... And not on a north... South... Grantsville both days w/ Tom S, George W, Josh S, Kevin S, Jim H, and a handful of Kiters... The real question is WHERE were you?! Your sails will still fit in the bathtub out there... Just yell "DUCK!!!" and we'll all be fine... Every jibe is a community affair Duck Jibe when Carl's around... You know I'm just jealous of your big stuff ... One of these times you need to come out and do some GPS runs w/your fast gear... Dimitri too! Anyway, sounded pretty good yesterday.

Oh, and where were you Kenny (both Kennys) on those great Grantsville mornings? Werk?