Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Saturday & Easter

What a weekend!

Lake Sunapee ROCKS! The nearly 1100 foot elevation makes for a different climactic designation for this unusual body of water. Everything south and down has melted, but Sunapee still has 12-14 inches of ice! Better still, the forecast is for more cold and a 10 inch dump on Thursday! This means that NEXT weekend is apt to be epic as well!

Almost Night: Shot by Charles Meding while flying the red kite in the foreground. We sailed all day on loose granular, and into the dark.



Last Year: Flying over the St. Lawrence River. By Michael Eudenbach

By way of reference, the sun angle and length of day is that of Labor Day weekend. Yep, that's right- count your days towards summer from the equinox and Easter is like Labor Day and next weekend is crowding AUGUST for sun angles! :)

Before I jinx the jet stream into a more seasonal pattern, I'll just give a quick weekend rundown and crash.

SATURDAY: Forecast- no wind. Reality- 10- 15 mph. Rick Hobbs had to skate with a 5,5 meter wing. He got some rides but he also skated and waited. It looked good some of the time, but I hate skating on skis so I changed teams and "took the kite".

With George Baskette and Charlie Meding as company, it is easy to see the potential of kites.

The surface was loose granular, and with a 4 line foil kite on handles it was fun to chuck the power of the kite around like a rock on the end of a string. Whip it up and down for speed, and send it back for a POWER jibe! Now TTHAT is fun- even if it does rip your arms and abs. BTW George with the 8 meter CA leader? Poetry in motion. And Charlie? How the hell can you fly a kite AND shoot photos?

EASTER SUNDAY: Arose and went to heaven. The overnight temperature was in the teens and the wind was a robust 15-25mph.

Bright sun, thin crispy snow atop hard ice with the new Kitewing Rage 5.5+.

Arose and went to heaven.

That docile powerhouse together with Volkl P30 Race Carver skis on such a surface IS heaven on earth!

The distance between Sunapee Harbor Lighthouse and Herrick Cove Lighthouse is just under 2 miles. I was making the run in under 5 minutes before I realized that I should start keeping track.

After about an hour I started blazing on a broad reach between the 2 points- [an approx. 4 mile round trip]-over and over while counting.

Long story short, I made 25 trips in about 5 hours. That SHOULD be about 100 miles, but without a GPS and a witness, it is quite unofficial. WHO CARES? I did it for me - not for the record books. That said, I plan to get a GPS this week. With luck, I'll have a dog in the hunt for the "Century Club" Award from the Chickawaukee Ice Sailing Club in Maine U.S.A.. before the season ends.

Happy Easter and god bless.

Winter RULES!!!!!!!!


Will

No comments:

Post a Comment