09/28 Grantsville, 5.2M/BIG board

[DevinClarke]

Showed up right as two guys were leaving. About 11:30am. It was my first time at Grantsville and my first time windsurfing in high wind. Rode for 2.5 hours in good wind. It was great. Another guy showed up at about noon and ripped around the lake.

[DimitriMilovich]

Hey Devin, glad you got some good sailing and had some company. Grant McAllister (driving) and I were the "two guys from Grantsville" this AM. You also missed George Ward, who was there before we were, along with the sunrise. The three of us got some decent 6.5 sailing for a couple hours, although not as powered as we would have liked. George left before 10:00 and Grant rigged his 7.7, which did the trick. People leaving and other people rigging bigger sails usually means it will get windy soon, and pick up it did. Grant and I left around 11:15 and it seemed nicely filled in 5.0 by then, which is what you showed up with. Perfect.

By the way, I've always wondered, out of the two fastest riggers in the West, who was quicker. It seemed like a tie since both Grant and George hit the water about the same time this morning. I followed 15 minutes later. The lake has gotten noticeably smaller, and when it shifted to the South, you really had be on your upwind game to stay upwind, although the higher windspeed made it doable. Sheet in, footstraps in, trim up wind, foot out, jibe. About as fast as you read this. Repeat.

[Carl Christensen]

For once the early shift at G-ville didn't peeter out on me. While the peak gusts all morning ranged up to 22-23mph I wasn't real stoked but loaded up at 11 anyway. The wind was kind enough to cooperate, as predicted but as rarely happens for me after the Gville a.m. shift, and ramped up around 11:30 with peaks pushing up to 34mph when I arrived. Game on. Actually, more like Cowboy Up.

One of the more vicious puffs swirled into a twister right when I launched and I buried my sail underwater to wait for it to go by thinking bigger twisters have been known to happen in this area. I still remember having bits of downtown construction and outdoor retailer show in the yard all the way up on 12th Ave and I Street when we had the tornado. Mercifully this one partially dissipated before getting to my side and everything stayed glued down.

After that it was off to the races, the drag races that is. Kinda like getting shot from a cannon over and over. There's a reason Ken O camps out out there. Some of the puffs were a mite inconvenient, like right when I was staring at Wall and already carrying plenty o' heat. The idea of slamming into the near vertical east shore while still accelerating gives me the willies. It's amazing that Kenny et al ever kited there. Thank Buddha no one ever got lifted off out of that little pond and spattered onto the dike.

Anyway, if you could hold on for a full 8 seconds you deserved a high score and in the meantime you got to ring the bell on the fun meter, assuming the wind hadn't shifted east, south or west. Again, how did the kites do it? The west puffs allowed reaches due north to south along the beach making the lake sail a bit bigger, although headlong into chatter chop. South to north, on the other hand, was unbelievably smooth, allowing your gear to easily absorb 4.5 pushes. Many of the gusts lasted for reach after reach and I never had to schlog even half of one.

Devin deserves a rookie of the day award sailing the entire sesh without a harness on what looked like a BIG board indeed.

Good job Devin. Looks like you got great rides, tacking and planing all over the south end. Don't even think about sailing the next few days without a wetsuit though. Glad neither you nor I had to sail alone. I have a board you could try that I might be able to give you for a while, or permanently for that matter, if you want. Let me know if that would be of help.

[Josh Shirley]

Devin doesn't like wetsuits so he and his wife are moving to Bonaire. There which he will learn to be a better windsurfer than all of us.