Sailing in Colorado
Friday, June 11th, 2004
For the most part it’s been a pretty dull spring out here in Colorado (aka Sh$tty Windsurf Land). The water warmed up enough to sail in a long wetsuit towards the end of March, but since then there’s only been 3-4 GOOD, sailable days (6.0 & better). One of the more epic days seemed to be a few weeks ago, the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend … as my luck would have it, that was the weekend that Banda [ I don't know, either! -ST] came out to visit me for a “golf weekend” … so there I was Sunday morning on the way to the golf course, driving past the lake watching a half dozen people out in 4.5 conditions … crap !!! I’m pretty sure that in that same position, Spencer would of dropped Banda’s sorry a$s off at the golf course, then proceed to the lake & absolutely haul a$s for a few hours. [that's correct! -ST] Actually, I regret not doing the same thing.
I did score last night for a couple of hours … I was sitting at work all day yesterday with the wind predictions in the 20-25 range … but not a damn thing was happening outside my work window all day long (by the way, my window is 4 miles downwind of the windsurf lake, so it’s a pretty good wind indicator). By about 5:00 or so a slight breeze picked up, & at that point since I wasn’t really bugging out of work “early” anymore, I headed off to the lake with an absolute clean conscience. Got there & was disappointed to see 2 guys on the water with big sails, hardly moving at all … sh$t … After 15 minutes they came to shore & we sat down for a half hour or so & chatted. These two guys … totally cool … were pretty much as “local” as you get - they lived around the corner, and are at this particular lake almost every other day & were both stumped as to why it wasn’t blowing. They were blaming it on this big cloud that was sitting just to the east of us. After a few more minutes (right now it’s about 6:00 or so), the wind picked up a little bit & they both hit the water again & actually got some planing rides in. They were sailing 7.5 & 8.3, so I was thinking sweet … I’ll rig my 9.0, which would be a bit big in the gusts, but should keep me non-stop planing. I go to the truck, pull out my sail, boom, and mast & happen to look up into the sky & sure enough that big cloud that was hovering to the east, pretty much disappeared! I’m thinking … hmmm, I wonder if those two guys actually knew what the hell they were talking about … pretty much at that exact moment, one of the two guys sailed to shore, pulled his gear out of the water & staked it to the ground down near his van. “Staked it to the ground??!” I’m thinking. I go over to talk to him & he asked me if I was ready for what was to come. Sure enough, we look to the West, towards the mountains with these gnarly looking charcoal clouds hovering over them & we see this huge ball of dirt, dust, tumbleweeds & everything else that wasn’t securely nailed down making a bee line straight for us!!! Within the next two minutes (literally), the wind went from 12 to absolutely nuclear … 40+ !!! I quickly threw all my big crap back into the truck, then looked out onto the misting, whitecapping water & that other poor bast@rd was still in the middle of the lake trying to hold onto his 8.3 … to no avail …. he tossed & tumbled himself all the way downwind & had to be rescued by the lake patrol before he washed up on a very gnarly, rocky shoreline by the dam. He ended up being OK, with only his ego bruised.
Wow … I need to catch my breath, this story is starting to go on & on …
Anyway, after 15 minutes, then wind settled down to a surprisingly, somewhat consistent 20-30, so I’m thinking what the hell, rig, that’s what I’m here for. Thinking it was going to drop off a bit as time went on, I rigged my 5.0 w/ the Axxis combo. Within 15 minutes, now it’s about 6:30 or so, I was on the water & absolutely powered out of my friggin’ mind. First reach out, went for a jibe in the middle of the lake & totally got my a$s kicked – everything went wrong - not even close! On the shore I already rigged my outhaul pretty tight – now I was in the middle of the lake trying to extend my boom to make my sail as flat as a door, with waves crashing over my head to whole time. Finally got everything set, waterstarted, started to sail back to shore & I was on the verge of hyperventilating big-time! Had a pretty uneventful, comfortably powered, enjoyable reach back to shore. I was able to catch my breath by then, so I jibed, turned around & continued sailing. Stayed on the water until about 8:00 in completely perfect-completely overpowering conditions. The other two guys eventually joined me as well (on much smaller gear) as we had the entire lake to ourselves!
Very, very, very, very sweet. Actually it was super sweet!
Laters,
-Chris