NOAA: South southwest wind 6 to 16 mph, with gusts as high as 24 mph. A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms before 1pm. Mostly sunny, with a high near 92. Heat index values as high as 101.












Might be a good afternoon at the Marina. SSW around a 6.9+ sail. Hanging by its teeth. Forecast has been downgraded twice as it's gotten closer. Late afternoon looks best. Super hot bring lots of water if going. Anybody thinking about it? Cooler Friday on the radar but it's been downgraded too. Don't see much farther out.

I have a meeting scheduled to 3 pm but plan to head out to the Marina right after that. Hoping there will still be some wind late.

Looks better then the Wolf forecast. I wish I had Friday for myself, but I don’t and Thursday is my only shot for the week. I may drive to Clinton after all.

It could be for nothing, but decision has been made. Starting to load up in a bit.

We just might have been lucky, but as I’ve said before Clinton rarely disappoints. It freaked me out initially after the moderate wind disappeared completely because of a few rain drops right when I was launching with my 7.5/110. For about 15 min there was absolutely nothing and I struggled to balance , even got backwinded at one point, but slowly it began to build up and soon I could plane in the gusts and do “pirouettes “ in the lulls.
Reid scored a perfect timing, launching at a point when he could plane with his 6.9 easily. He convinced me to sail upwind to the narrows where the funnelled wind is at it’s strongest. We sailed here for a while until it got too much for our sail sizes and we had to come in and downsize. We just changed sails to 5.7s , but kept the big boards and had a nicely powered second part of the session until probably 5:30 pm or so.
Now I have a dilemma! In situations like this when there is a good chance for the wind to increase, shall I rig big and get myself tyred doing stuff I shouldn’t be doing with a 7.5, or rig small and miss some planning opportunities but having a light sail for light wind freestyle stuff and when it pucks up I won’t have to rerig?! It sounds tempting-forgoing the 7.5 and 6.5 Retros completely and getting a 6.2 Revo instead for this kind of conditions. I came to the point where simple blasting, the so called “burn and turn” type of sailing, the only thing you can do with big sails is getting increasingly boring for me . It would have been different if we had a racing scene here. Competition would have motivated me to turn to slalom equipment for sailing in the moderate wind range , but competing with my self, timing runs on a gps for example just doesn’t really cut it for me. I don’t know, just sharing some of the thoughts I have had lately.
Shall I look to replace my Atom with a big freestyle or fsw board? I don’t know. It does such a great job for me being a stable/wide and flat/ platform for light wind stuff and having no control issues in winds up to 30 mph and heavy chop. On top of that it turns fantastically and could be used for light wind wave riding too-in place of a windsup. Such a great board! I’ll stick with it for now , I can’t afford a replacement anyway .

A lot more wind than the models forecast. Got there a little bit before 1:00. 6.9 with the 108 FSW was working. Ady and I headed up to The Narrows. Rick was on a 7.5 making a dam run, and back. Around 4:00 we rigged down to 5.8s. Had fun trying 360s at The Narrows. I was a little too tired to try much after 4 hours on the 6.9 before rigging down. I had a nice catapult. One of those nasty ones where you're fighting it but you know what's coming. Highlight of the day for me was catching waves off a wake-boat that was going slow and steeply pitched so his friend could surf behind it on a surfboard. It was like a set of waves coming off this boat. I could get 5 turns off these waves until I caught up to the boat and was nearly on the wave the surfer was on. They're looking back like, "what the hell"? I jibed away. Rich made it out and was ripping on his 7.5 with Volar. Impressive to see Ady doing upwind 360s and heli-tacks on his 110L like he was on a windsup. I got off the water a little after 6:00 Great to see everybody. 'till next time.


Bloomington


Champaign


Decatur




7 of the day's 25 photos.

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Rick (7.5 sail) at The Narrows



Rick (7.5 sail) at The Narrows



Rick (7.5 sail) at The Narrows



Ady (7.5 sail)



Ady (7.5 sail)



Ady (7.5 sail) Doing an upwind 360. See link for full sequence



Ady (7.5 sail) tearing into a jibe.




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Ady wrote:
That's how us locals roll.

Reid, thank you for the nice pictures, you are the best! They helped me figure out where the weird upper back muscle aching on the next day came from. Those otherwise rarely used muscles have been working very hard in these moves. It’s obvious in the picture below even with a rashguard on:

Looks like you all had a great day! Are we getting out of the lulls of summer?

Nice pictures. Great moves from Ady. Looks like a fun place to sail.