I could have gone to Winnebago if I have been more decisive or if I knew that Roman and Gregg will be there, but when Roman called me this morning it was too late for me already. They had a very nice day apparently. I went to Silver Lake instead with my buddy Ivo. I was very pessimistic on my way to the lake, but upon arrival I got surprised with better then expected 7.5 conditions. There was one windsurfer already out and two more joined later for a total of 5 and 2 kiters. Silver Lake is nothing special honestly and even though SW to SSW is probably the optimal wind direction it was still very inconsistent and directly onshore to the launch. On top of everything there are a LOT of weeds -especially on the west side of the lake.
I rigged a 6.5/110 initially, but it wasn’t quite enough and I had to shlog too much for my liking, so I came in after a little while and rigged the 7.5 instead. One major development happend while with the 6.5 though- I came one step closer to completing a Downwind 360 . I did the right thing of leaning forward and keeping the sail back after I stepped over and I was able to turn the board to just 45 degrees to the wind at which point I could have lifted the sail without getting flipped over. Unfortunately the gust that I used to accelerate had died and I couldn’t lift the sail and had to drop it. I tried later with the 7.5 again, but the sail is too heavy and in this position I have very little leverage so the effort was futile and I gave up on trying -7.5 is not the right size to learn the move, maybe later when I get good at it , but not now definitely.
Overall the day turned a lot better then expected especially considering my 360 progress, but I can’t help but wonder if Lake Andrea wouldn’t have been better with SSW being a good direction and the very few and less “aggressive “ type of weeds there. Forgot about making pictures unfortunately, I’m no Reid nor Gregory