8/20 (Yahoo) & 8/19 (Ugh) Grants

[John Freed]

Ken and I sailed Grants the last couple of days... Today (8/20) was wonderful! Full on wild wind, Ken on a 6.0, I was on a 5.8, both on 85 L boards... we debated rigging down throughout the morning but just decided to "hang on", the wind on the east side was rockin' and rollin', o'powered most of the time, and the best bet was to start jibbing early as the dike would come up real fast. Wind stayed pretty good until about noon, and we decided to quit while we were ahead (and while we still had enough energy to derig...). Yesterday 6.5/7.0, 109L, really holey gusty, skunky wind... maybe it was a "Gorge Hangover" for me as Ken handled it much better than I. Didn't last long, as we got out of there before the rain about 10:30, however the wind meter showed some nice wind after we left. Today, I talked to the water guy who was measuring the lake level. He said they can still take it down 20' this summer/fall. Ugh, reach is getting pretty short as is, long walk from your rig to the lake... dang...

[kenonstott]

Full on adrenaline morning. Put together more full planing jibes than the whole Gorge trip. Hard to get out of the house in the morning as it was so dark and rainy but the west side of the Tooele valley was mostly sunshine for a great surprise and a wild morning. By noon all we could do was smile and high-five.