8/16 G'ville Wall of Wind, 6.5 - yahoo!
Posted: Fri Aug 16, 2013 1:23 pmScary drive once I started on the Grantsville turn-off from the Tooele road. I couldn't see the Stansburys for the huge cloud of smoke and just had the blood orange sunrise coming dimly over the Oquirrhs behind me. Will I be coughing the whole time on the water? Is there even access? Funny how stratified the air is, though. Grantsville town was barely breezy, as always, and the smoke high above that was masking the mountains looked like it had been blown south by winds high over the lake from the north. Huh? Then I got to G'ville reservoir itself and lo and behold, the frosting between the cake layers - pretty steady wind in the low 20's. Yahoo.
Got on the water at 8:00, joined shortly by Ken, then Grant, then Josh and Carl. Very nice 6.5 sailing, quite filled in compared to yesterday. Carl played racer guy today with his Isonic and a 7.2 and launched next to his car at the north end then ripped up to join the rest of us. Great rides for an hour, then we all stopped to watch this big Sikorsky CH-54 helicopter (not Russian, I was mistaken) hover 20 feet over the NE portion of the lake and do its part to suck G'ville dry. Amazing water cloud it threw up, no idea how they had that control almost right next to the steep bank in what was now a 25 mph crosswind. Very cool. Josh thought the lake dropped 5 feet, but I think he was joking. Wouldn't have been surprised, though. Odd, we never saw it again.
But then, as we were lamenting the loss of water (yeah, OK, it's better they put out the fires, I really agree), the wind machine turned on even more and from 9:00 till almost 9:30 I think we all were bug-eyed with white-knuckled speed runs and howling jibes. Yahoo indeed. Can you say, "wake chop"? From 5 sailors? Carl ripped all over the lake upwind, downwind, using up far more than his share of the wind, but that's OK, he's a bro. Pretty much done by 10:00.
What's next, my favorite lake?
Got on the water at 8:00, joined shortly by Ken, then Grant, then Josh and Carl. Very nice 6.5 sailing, quite filled in compared to yesterday. Carl played racer guy today with his Isonic and a 7.2 and launched next to his car at the north end then ripped up to join the rest of us. Great rides for an hour, then we all stopped to watch this big Sikorsky CH-54 helicopter (not Russian, I was mistaken) hover 20 feet over the NE portion of the lake and do its part to suck G'ville dry. Amazing water cloud it threw up, no idea how they had that control almost right next to the steep bank in what was now a 25 mph crosswind. Very cool. Josh thought the lake dropped 5 feet, but I think he was joking. Wouldn't have been surprised, though. Odd, we never saw it again.
But then, as we were lamenting the loss of water (yeah, OK, it's better they put out the fires, I really agree), the wind machine turned on even more and from 9:00 till almost 9:30 I think we all were bug-eyed with white-knuckled speed runs and howling jibes. Yahoo indeed. Can you say, "wake chop"? From 5 sailors? Carl ripped all over the lake upwind, downwind, using up far more than his share of the wind, but that's OK, he's a bro. Pretty much done by 10:00.
What's next, my favorite lake?