2021-06-23 to 25 - Three More Days

 Dried Meat Lake - Ted's Place

Ted's Report:

June 23 - Foiling in the Weeds.

Well, my lake is starting to get more floating weeds.  After getting caught in several weed patches in a row on the far side, I found that if I sailed/foiled a bit downwind, and stayed on my half of the lake, it was pretty clear.  I foiled for the last hour without picking up any weeds - well maybe one....

It was a pretty good day!  I am getting through a lot of jibes with speed - maybe there is hope.




June 24 - No wind but Wake Foiling with Spencer and Wake Surfing with Louise.

Thursday, was a beautiful warm day.  Spencer, Louise, and I headed out in the boat just before supper for some wake surfing and foiling.  We had a great evening in the boat.  Louise isn't dropping the rope, but the rope is now slack almost all the time.  She is really progressing.  I am starting to get more comfortable pumping the foil when I start falling behind the wave, and Spencer, of course, never falls off the wave and is cutting back and forth - even outside the wake.





June 25 - Biking, Foiling, Finning, and donating blood.

Louise and I started out the day with a 35km bike ride to Camrose and back.  There was a pretty good headwind on the way there, which was a lot of work, but which made the ride home fast and relatively easy.  Somehow it is harder to keep the power on when you have a tailwind!

I then rigged my foil but had a frustrating time.  The weeds which I experienced on Wednesday had gotten a lot worse.  I am hoping that with the wind we just had there are a lot of weed patches floating down the lake and that they will clear in a few days, but I am fearful that my windfoiling may be done at home until the fall.  While I was able to steer around a lot of the weed patches (you can see them relatively clearly when you are flying high on the foil), I only had a few tacs without having to stop and get off and clear the foil.  Damn!!!  It may be clearer down south of the boat launch, so next time I will try launching there before I give up on the lake entirely.

Foiling between the weeds.  It was good steering practice!

I re-rigged and went out on my 6.6 Hucker and Shark board with my trusty weed fin!  I was well powered most of the time, and it was definitely my best "Windsurfing" day of the year!  The weed fin works great, and you don't really notice any performance loss - particularly when sailing alone.  Windsurfing, however, is much more work than foiling, and I will definitely be feeling it tomorrow.

6.6 Hucker and Shark!


I finished off the day by donating blood in Camrose. 

Great day!

I see on Strava that Blaine got out today at Gerry's in Lesser Slave Lake and that Cam had a great day at Wabamun, but I haven't received any reports from either of them.

I have my SUP's all ready for the weeds...



Lac Ste. Anne - Alberta Beach

Harolds (Late) Report:

Another great day at Lac Ste Anne.  Vadim sounded the heads-up.  Thanks, Vadim. 

I arrived at noon and it looked iffy.  But one kiter (Matt) seemed to be making it work, so I figured I would give it a try.  The worst that can happen at Lac Ste Anne is that you power out, fall down, drift to shore in maybe 15 minutes and walk back.  Not that I would know, of course!

But there was just enough wind to power up my 6.1 and get in a reach, do a pivot jibe (or a flop jibe), run back, pivot, and repeat.  Pleasant but not exciting.    

Then Alan and Vadim showed up around 130PM and by the time they were rigged the wind picked up and the swells built a little.   We were well powered to overpowered – perfect for fun! – for a couple of hours. 

Back in the kids’ section, it looked like the kiters were having fun.  Ross said he kited for 6 hours!  Best day ever!


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