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Yeah…..I ended up sitting this one out.
But man did Rick Griffin sail some big conditions at Webster Park. 4.7 Side on in what eventually went to 3.8 before he left the water. A small group of us watched from the shore longing to sail but knowing that our abilities would be challenged to the limit and past on this day.
In spot of all the great meter reads I heard that Durand was offshore, and even that at least one kiter didn’t enjoy his session at Montana.
Chris Joyce managed a downwinder from Braddock Bay to Charlotte where Cream Cheese Brownie Bill drove him home. I’m hoping to hear more about that one.
A pic (of many, and video) of Rick:
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Nice jump!
Kevin and Jeff drove up from Ithaca to Sodus, and kited there. Jeff said 45 minutes was enough for him, but Kevin did well on his 7.0. I had a previous commitment with Deb to go for a hike to see fall colors, and we were running out of weekends. So on Saturday we went to Letchworth and hiked on both sides of the canyon. Amazing volume of water, after the storm. Peak flow on the Genny was 19,000 CFM. Pretty day, but Letchworth doesn’t have a lot of reds this year.
Sunday, I was late to the game at Myers Point, and went out trying to get the 6-ish winds on the Aero, but no such luck as it was dying off. Re-rigged bigger, which of course caused the wind to come back and I had about an hour of mega-powered riding on the 7.5/iSonic.
When I was beginning windsurfer, in my 2nd-7th years, living in da ‘Burgh, I used to drive up to Presque Isle and sail with the Erie gang (Joe, Debbie, John, et al.). Had a Mistral Ecstasy and a NP 3.5 Kombat for the days when it was “big”. Hard to describe the Jekyll/Hyde nature of riding near-gale conditions on the big lake. For sure, when you’re dialed-in and nailing jibes it really feels very comfy out there, like a tiny board and sail are the perfect sailing craft in all the chaos going on around you. But going down brings out the darker side…the circling motion of water in the swells grabs your rig and flips the whole kit over and over, and the wind/wave make it so you have to swim like hell to keep from getting separated from your gear…meanwhile the breaking stuff pummels you mercilessly. Once you get your kit, and manage to get the sail flying, of course you have about 6 seconds between peaks of the swells to get the board aligned and nail your waterstart. And, of course, down in the trough there’s no wind at all, but on the peaks it’s blowing 35. Preque Isle has some love ’em / hate ’em features, which are 75 yard (or so) long rip-rap breakwalls, spaced about 25 yards apart, that go the full length of the peninsula. These are very helpful getting out, because the make the shore break quite manageable. But you really can’t jibe close to one in storm conditions, because they’ll destroy you and your board if you can’t get started quickly (been there, been terrified). Getting between them to come in isn’t that hard, but knowing that you can’t fall gets your full attention and sense of vulnerability. One of those days, I learned the meaning of “big” when I was down and trying to control my gear. It was somewhat later in the afternoon, and I saw the shadow of the wave pass over me and heard the roar of whitewater right before I got hit by a rogue wave.
Maybe if I got that all the time, I’d be more fired up for 35-40 kt winds on the big lakes, but a handful of times a year just doesn’t interest me. The Oswego / Mexico Bay gang really are into these conditions, I suspect they had a rousing day. But I like fully functioning knees and ankles, and the learning curve with rare opportunities just doesn’t grab me. Having broken my foot once (hasn’t ever been the same, despite perfect alignment on x-rays), I’m not interested in more. I’ll go for it on Seneca, the OBX, but not the big lakes. BTW, Debbie (from Erie) is a killer in the big stuff. She’s tiny, and so when watching from shore (even high on the beach) her small sail completely disappears when she goes into the troughs. And I don’t think I ever saw her fall.
GEM
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The down winder mentioned above was exciting, not very enjoyable however. Seeing the Montana updates on the windline as 7m conditions at Montana and it looking lighter at my house I went with a 9m kite. This was clearly too small of a kite as my novice love, Lindsay pointed out while helping me launch on my planned down winder. It’s a good thing going down the beach was the plan as there was no staying upwind on a 9m this day. I made the best of it by heading well out into the lake in hopes of finding stronger winds. I found the wind to slightly stronger away from shore, with large holes aplenty. To keep things interesting I mixed in some downloops and downwind kite loops with plenty of kite crashes which I attribute equally to my budding skill and the inconsistent wind. One of these crashes resulted in the kite inverting (flipping the lines inside out). I’ve had good luck with simply releasing the kite and letting it sort it’s self out in the past, but when I tried this time, the kite became further wound up in it’s self. There are very spots to safely land a kite as most of the homes have concrete break walls between my house and Montana Beach. I tried to come ashore near Schaller’s, but the wind was too light for me to keep the kite in the air within 100 yards of shore, so I continued down to Charlott wishing I could loop the kite for extra power in the turns but the lines did not untwist well following inverting the kite. I tried to keep my speed up as much as possible to increase the apparent speed of the kite and to improve of my odds of not swimming in. When I came to within 50′ from shore I was no longer able to keep the kite in the air. Due to the light conditions I was able to walk ashore without having to worry about the kite. I was able to relaunch just long enough to set the kite on the beach.
Cheesecake Brownie arrived as I was lying out my lines to untangle them prior to winding things up. We had a nice chat about the weather and how what we were seeing was very far off the wind prediction and recent events surrounding his new nickname. He offered to give me a ride home as he was heading to check out the conditions at Long Pond anyway.
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