And that was it! I did see the 20 in the sky for a while indeed, but no more This year came to its logical conclusion. It started on 21.01 right here at Lake Clinton’s marina and finished today 16.12 at the same spot and with the same kit-7.5 Retro/110 AtomIQ. Pretty cool, isn’t it ?


What an awesome day! The temperature at the launch was 55 F by the time I started my car. The water is cold, but still far from freezing. I think the wind over the lake must have been around 5 mph less then what the Decatur station displays and I think that’s consistent with my observations during this year. That first session in January was on a similar warm and sunny day I recall and Clinton has become one of my favorite places to windsurf-great wind and water, Great People! Looking forward to another great year with a more visits to this great Lake.
What a season! January to December, Jesus is this still Illinois?!!
A memory from January, me and Chris sailing while Reid was taking beautiful pictures:

You scored!

And air temp hit 55°F at 2:50 PM at Lane

For comparison:

Ady wrote:
I would have to disagree with ya, with 30+ years of experience. Clinton Lake water level is higher than the town of Decatur. Just this year we had a lady sailor drive through the West Side and told us she was just at Decatur and that it was a lot winder at Clinton Lake. Other windsurfers from Decatur have said the same thing over the years. They would drive to Clinton even with a lake in their backyard. You could make the case that Bloomington is windier, we have seen that over the years. Also a lot depends on how the wind zone goes through and which towns are shutting off and which towns are firing. Like today the wind zone moved from upper left to lower right. Making Decatur and Champaign show more wind in the afternoon.

Wolf lake west station for example reports higher speeds then they are in reality, thats why I use the Calumet harbor station . The Decatur and Bloomington especially may have the same odd issue. I would have been wildly overpowered with 6.5 and 7.5 in gusts up to 30 mph and I wasn’t at any point, just underpowered to nicely powered with sails on medium to low settings. I wouldn’t trust any small town weather station to give me precize readings, just close enough.

The other thing at the Marina is there's a world of difference up wind at the The Narrows where you would get the full force of the wind. We've had a lot of day's when you get up there and you find yourself over powered. Luckily you can stand up there and give everything one more click out. The Bridge pool was probably going off too with today's direction while the morning wind lasted.

That's why I post all 3 stations to get the idea. There's a nice archive from seshes.