After a recent return to the sport after an extended hiatus, I finally took advantage of the windy forecast for Friday and made the two hour drive to Patoka Lake. Having only sailed twice on the OH River near downtown Louisville on two larger boards in the last couple of weeks, I decided to combine my first ever visit to Patoka with my first ride on my smallest board, a Futura 101. The wind was very marginal most of the time for the 6.5, I should have rigged the 7.5, but I was determined to try out what I hope will be my favorite setup. Got minimal time in the footstraps, lots of practice slogging along in fairly rough water, and some valuable lessons in the difficulty of uphauling a smallish board. I hope to eventually return to my previous skill level when the fun greatly outweighed the frustration and exertion, when waterstarts greatly outnumbered uphauls. But, all in all, it was a great day and I look forward to more windy days now that summer is behind us.

Hi,

Have returned to area as well. Any thoughts on a good site to windsurf on Patoka Lake.

Thanks

You can Google Earth or Map the lake, on the south side there is a large state recreation area (Co Rd 1100W) with a beach and parking that would allow for a short carry to the water this time of the year when things are slow. I imagine summertime might be prohibitively crowded. Almost due north across the lake is another area (Co Rd 1075W) with a boat ramp, parking, and a small restroom. The boat ramp is pretty shielded from wind in the cove but the parking lot has a grassy area for rigging and a well-worn short foot trail down to a better launch area. Just east of this area is a narrow county road (S Co Rd 1075W) that spurs off the main road and leads down to an old abandoned boat ramp that has a small area for parking and rigging but offers the best exposure for southerly winds. That is where I sailed Friday. My only concern is that my car was in an unobserved area that might allow folks with bad intentions to easily break in while I was out sailing.

Let me try the map tags. And let's see this puppy.

Boom! Embedded interactive map.

It doesn't offer the long reaches of Rend or Carlysle, Reid, but it's a vast improvement over the Ohio River at Louisville!

Mark Sobaszko wrote:

Yeah, you're getting almost 2 miles of fetch for SW SE and W wind. That's better than just about every spot at Clinton. I like that reef south of the launch for a SSE SE wind.




You might want to check out the dam. For NNW NW wind. The land to the NNW doesn't have many trees and the land is lower than the lake level. Might be a freestyle / speed sailing spot. Looks like a high bluff on the south side to funnel the wind and a good exit. That's all a maybe until checked out.

The Patoka wind tunnel

Reid, I drove through the parking/overlook area by the dam and didn't remember seeing any decent launch sites, unfortunately. It was a steep slope over large jagged rocks down to the water everywhere that I could observe. Since I only loaded my small board that day, I concentrated on those two north sites that had the best wind exposure. Thanks for pointing out that reef area, I remained east of it and saw some buoys over there that I assumed were channel markers for the boat ramp up in the cove but they're probably warning of the shallows there. I'm going to take the bigger boards next time so I can do some exploring and cruising around to better familiarize myself with the area.
You're right about Patoka being superior to Clinton. I've flown over southern IL several times lately and while drooling in anticipation over the prospect of sailing Carlyle or Rend, Clinton reminds me of my neighborhood OH River site. But I've got the sailing bug so bad now after my long layoff that I'll take any piece of water large enough to allow some wind to reach the sail.