September 17th, 2005
HaulAss Report From Isabella
...so we're planning to head up to the lake this past weekend to just camp & chill & prep the trailer for the winter, with Cliff & Janice, who were going to prep their trailer, too. About Wednesday I notice that it looks like it's setting up for a little wind, maybe enough to sail. "Naw" I think, "It never blows this time of year, I've been fooled before". Thursday it still looks good, but being cautious I don't send out a general alert, just to those of us that are going -- by this time we'd been joined by Kevin & Linda, and I learned that Cliff & Janice's son Casey would be joining us as well.
Still not fully convinced, we sleep in a bit on Saturday morning, and don't get to the lake until 11:30, where it's already blowing 22, and climbing! We pound our Subway sandwiches, rig 5.2 & 4.0, and start jammin' around like it's springtime. Casey arrives, and he & I jam down to the Ghetto just in time for it to start to get sketchey, so we sail back up & re-rig bigger, 6.3 Nitro2 for me, 5.3 Legend for Casey. After a while that gets sketchy as well, so we call it a night and everyone goes out for Mexican food.
Sunday dawns with a fairly strong Northerly blowing, not looking too good for sailable wind. But the temperature's nice with the little breeze coming off the water, so we hang out and do trailer stuff and read and kill flies. There's tons of flies due to the dead fish from the last algae bloom or whatever.
Casey leaves, Cliff & Janice leave, Manny leaves, PRESTO! it starts to blow! Linda & Kevin & Debi & I all rig our biggest gear (6.5, 8.2, 6.6, 7.6, respectively) and sail for 2 1/2 hours, just us and a few beginners, cruising on Cadillac gear. Those of you who sneer at large sails are missing one of the coolest sailing experiences, just cruising back & forth, no sudden moves, swimming-pool smooth water.
Had a blast, rolled everything up and left around 6:30, incredibly happy to have had such a nice weekend of sailing with our friends unexpectedly. Kinda hard to go back to work today, but worth every minute of "sailing hangover".
--Spennie