2 categories

Light wind, Big gear  - Lake Bonney

Goolwa Lake, SA, AU Wind: SE 13-18

Naish 6.0 Starboard S type. Drake 44 and THE Sonic 75, NP Z1 7.4 Fin Drake 44

sailed a lot but not a good day for me

Goolwa Lake, SA, AU Wind: SE 13-18

Tabou S3 107, NP Z1 7.4

Busy waiting for Tradies to show !! showed up late and used Hayden's rig on my freeride board

didn't like the sail much, few runs and home for a beer !

better than rigging my own sail for a short sess.

5 Hours of fun fanging back & forth & I am now fagged. Brused batterd & sun burnt, but gee it was great fun

CA SL62 6.6 Koncept Drake 30something & Select Weed Fin Great time blasting with Jeff & a heap of locals,

1 categories

Stansbury, SA, AU

4-1-12 Lake George S to SSE 12-22 knots-2012 7m Loft Blade+Fanatic SL111+MFC 40 cm weedy.

On the water by about 0530 hours with my first run being my second best NM for the whole day! Go figure. Days sailing was divided into 2 main sessions. Morning then afternoon.

Morning session. Thought was going to kick some arse distance wise especially after my first run but after my first gybe it was hard work and lost contact with the shore line being stuck downwind in the main lake. Had light wind setting and keeping ground was difficult. Should have chucked 7.8m in retrospect! Wind eventually died out and just made my way back on the plane.

3 hour luch break from around 1130 hours as wind finally filled in being more sea breeze'ish from SSE.

Changed sail to high wind setting with just extra stop on mast extension and must say handled like a treat. Felt smooth, slippery, great control. Wind had definitely kicked in, yay. Whether was more wind or not, could gp upwind easier now. Getting a bit tired more noticeable as wind really kicked in.

Saw the crew sailing on middle lake so thought I'd be sociable and go join them. Biggest mistake ever! Chose to sail the gap and ran aground. The sound of gravel and seashells reprofiling the bottom of the fin is NOT a nice sound:-( Slogged my way to where could finally drag way my clear in the middle lake and then to my horror discovered the runs were ultra short and the water depth and weed were super shallow. (see  bottom of picture) Done my dash phyiscally with the slog and packed it in. If I'd stayed on the main lake I might have pushed 300 kms easy but not to be:-)

Conclusions. The 2012 7m Loft Blade is a rangey sail. Very nice powered and tweaks super nice with adjustable outhaul. This MFC 40 cm weedy I recon is crap so punting on Lessacher Duo Weeds I have on order.  Water levels in middle lake to shallow for big sails or greater than 32 cm weedy's. Having said that the middle lake is flat end to end, side to side and running under 32 cm weedies would be a treat!! A westerly would kick arse big time atm!!!!

The picture above has a couple odd straight line plots from the launch site. WTF:-( GPSResults dosn't show that at all so I'm assuming my data re distance is in the right ballpark.

Semaphore South, SA, AU

SSW  20-25 ,exocet Cross 94 , 5.3 KA kult, 30 select free wave

Nice little Bump & jump session after work.

Lake George, SA, AU Wed afternoon 15-18 7.5 NCX Severne 103L F2 30 Leading Edge weed fin.  Shorter session than for the rest of the week but great sailing conditions plenty of flat water

PJ came down to Lake George for attempt on distance so thought I would join him as forecast was for wind all day. He was on the North Lake  way before me but I got a good morning session on a NW wind of about 15 knots before it dropped off a bit and not enough for the ISonic 94, 6.8 Switchblade and the Select S Weed Eliminator.

The wind picked up in the afternoon and joined the others on the south lake for a great evening session and eventually got well past my target of 100km with 74.3 nm on the Garmin Foretrex 201. On downloading thr results I discovered that the Garmin'n memory is 10,000 points and then starts deleting the from the beginning of the session so the download was only showing 110km but I'm sure the 137  from the GPS display is appropriate in the circumstances. Another PB whoopee.

PJ was a bit underdone by the wind as well but a great effort don't know where he gets the stamina and determination from but there's no way I could keep up with him.

Just saw the UK results - awesome!!!!!!