Day #19 on the lake

Max Temperature 89 °F / 31 °C
Wind Speed 7 mph / 12 km/h
Forecast: NW 5-15 or NW 10-20 (wunderground/weather channel)
Max Wind Speed 13 mph / 20 km/h
Max Gust Speed 22 mph / 35 km/h
GPS: forgot to start the timer :(

I got busy building a new trailer box and then the rain kicked in and the wind died. We finally got some today, but boy it was trashy.It rained this morning, then the sun came out, but there wasn’t any wind until around noon. I took the trailer first to the dam, where I saw wind come from every direction at the same time, depending on where you were.

Then I drove to Cook and wished I’d brought the Superlight, as it was perfect 6 knots and not a soul in site.

Then I went to Cool Swimming Area and it looked like 8-9 over by Elm Hill Marina, but it would been iffy to get there.

Finally, I went to Hamilton Creek Boat Ramp and it was really dead all the way to Bear Island. After I picked up trash left from 4th of July fireworks, I went and gassed up and hit BK for a sandwich.

I went back to the boat ramp and thought I saw a couple of whitecaps. The wind was a litte more Northerly now and I thought I could make it out, but I wasn’t positive I would plane and wished I had the 10.5. I rigged the 9.5 with minimal downhaul.

Winds were so light I had to uphaul even though there were some gusts at the ramp. 30 yards out I fell when the wind died. As soon as I uphauled, the wind picked up, I got in the straps and was flying upwind. I was pointing really high and was getting so overpowered I had to bear off. I headed to the end of Anderson Road walking trail up by Bear Island to batten down the hatches. When I got there, I hopped off and looked upwind to see solid whitecaps! Damn, I wish I was on 5.5 right now and I’m quite sure 5.0 would work, too.

The water was really rough and I didn’t want to lug everything to shore and downhaul, so I moved the outhaul to the bottom grommet and maxxed the outhaul.

I was so OP’d going back toward the boat ramp that I stopped at the Anderson Rd. boat ramp to downhaul, but now it had let up and I decided to head in. Only the wind shifted and I had a terrible time getting back; I must have tacked a dozen times.

Once I got on the other side, the wind was alternately huge gusts and huge holes. I would see a gust coming, it would hit, off I would go only to get backwinded by a gust coming from the opposite direction.

I sailed for 40 minutes and that was enough.

The wunderground graph is complete bull as are the “Max” numbers above. I know I saw solid mid to high 20’s.