Had fun today. Mini report below. My knot meter instrument can be viewed at: <http://www.speedtech.com/asp/prodtype.asp?prodtype=6> ****************************** Man Back in the Ocean - June 2002 Doug Lloyd Sunday was gorgeous: sunny and windy. Sirens called all day. Resistance was futile. The discipline of delay had kept me long enough and I was anxious to try my new sail in some real wind. Juan de Fuca was kicking all day. With an opportunity missed to paddle with the club to Portland Island in the morning, I headed out to the strait in the late afternoon once winds had hit the top end for a Small Craft Warning. I purposely kept the outing south of Race Rocks. Undoing the bow and stern lines, I next released the straps and started to roll back the kayak off the Hully Rollers. A sudden gust of wind caught the kayak's bow, high in the air, and pushed it sideways. I hung on as best I could, twisting my bicep as the boat fell 6-feet to the pavement below. A new ford SUV was a mere 1-meter from the van, and the kayak narrowly missed severely scraping the side of the shinny green monster. There was absolutely no damage to the heavy reinforced old gal. What a tough boat. My bicep was killing me though after that, right on the heals of a forearm injury just getting better. Once on the water after a few warm-up sculls, I paddled upwind half a mile, then set up the Spirit Sail rig. The wind was coming offshore at a bit of an angle. My wrist-watch knot-meter read 15 knots. Gusts maxed out at 20. It looked worse mid-strait. I angled-out to half a mile offshore and road the wind for a mile. With the wind at an angle, I was reaching a bit and had to hold the paddle in the brace position as side gusts were a severe. I was having a good day physically, with little or no dizziness. I was concerned about getting too far from shore though, given the new gear issues and implications for normative rescue procedures. It wasn't too difficult to take down and collapse the sail, though the narrowness of the kayak didn't make it the ideal sailing kayak. I beat back upwind with paddle power, favoring my uninjured left arm with the use of the rudder to offset tracking force -- deployed already for the downwind sailing. I had come a fair distance in a short time with the sail. I had moved so fast, paddling had been unnecessary. It was king of cool burying the bow in the waves as I wa driven downwind. Once back parallel to the parking lot, I moved upwind a bit, and addressed a good rolling session in order to make myself a little more confident after my pathetic failures the previous week off Sidney. I then mounted the sail while being blow backwards. I took a big gulp of air, the tried a roll about a hundred meters from shore, with the sail erected. The kayak lay at a 45-degree angle upside down, and wouldn't budge. I tried sculling back up, but the water resistance on the sail kept the kayak inverted. Thinking fast, I kept hold of the paddle in my right hand, and pulled the sail out of its mount on the upside down deck with my left hand. Running out of air, I released the sail and mount, reoriented the paddle, then rolled back up. The sail was sinking and I was being blow backwards. Fortunately, it was a bright red and yellow sail. At $300.00 or so, I wasn't prepared to sacrifice it to the sea gods. Bailing out of my kayak, I swam to the front. I was being blow backwards, slightly away from shore and had a hard time keeping track of the sail on the ocean floor. I couldn't get my head underwater, nor swim for the sail with my regular foam-core PFD. I took it off and placed it in the cockpit. Then grabbing the bowline and releasing it to full length -- 4-meters -- I placed it in my teeth. I had a hard, cold time swimming about to and fro, trying to relocate the sail with my blurry nderwater vision. Once found, I made two attempts and finally retrieved it from the bottom of the sea. The bowline was just long enough to let me reach the sail with my hand. Within another 5-minutes, I was back on shore. The drytop had shipped a fair amount of water. A lady came over and thanked me for the entertainment. She wasn't sure at first if she should call the authorities, especially after I kept disappearing below the surface. She didn't realize I was retrieving my sail. I should have practiced at the lake, but that would be too normal. No fun in that. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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