The view from home

...or, more precisely, the view from Tony's porch, two houses down from mine. Tony took this a few weeks ago; this was my second session back on the water after recovering from my shoulder injury. I was out on my 7.2 Sailworks NXfw and my new Exocet Warp Slalom 67, and the combo worked exceedingly well even in the somewhat gusty and streaky conditions found on the lake (the board glides well through lulls and stays controllable even in the big gusts, and the sail is just so insanely rangey that it's truly a joy).

And that pretty much answers the obvious (at least to all my non-sailing friends and neighbors) question as to why I don't sail the lake more often. It's rare for winds to be anything other than really flukey due to the terrain all around. The hills don't outright block the wind (we get tremendous southeasterlies shaking the house all the time in the winter), but they do make it very inconsistent.

That said, sailing the lake does have its charms. The views are nice, safety is a non-issue, it takes me all of a minute to get to the launch at Bloedel Donovan Park, and my kids get extremely excited seeing Dad on the water from their own deck. On this particular day, the wind was SE, but too easterly to sail the bay, plus I only had a short window of opportunity - so instead of waiting for things to fill in from the south and squander my chance to sail, I had a pretty nice session and got back to working. Not a bad life ;)


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