Windsurfing & Stand-Up Paddleboarding in Michigan
Hello All
For you speed demons out there, I just thought I would add some food for thought.
A few years ago Ann and I had a week off in September and checking the wind forecasts showing nothing to be found anywhere except a small town in Minnesota called Worthington on a small inland lake called Lake Okabena.(similar to Cass). We made the treck from Windsor which took some twelve hours of driving. Once there I called Craig Berg (cberg@iw.net) as we had previously contacted him to let him know we would be there to attempt a try at speed sailing. Try www.midwestspeedquest.com of which Craig is one of the overseers. I must say Craig and his wife Pam turned out to be some of the most gracious hosts we have ever come across. He gave us all kinds of vouchers (sponsered by the speedquest) for food and lodging and so the trip turned out to be way more inexpensive than we had budgeted for owing that to Craig.
Once there we set up our gear and were on the water sailing, at the end of the session Craig told us we could leave our gear rigged and just to put it in his garage and we could come back (his house is right at one of the launch sites), the next day and just pull it out and sail again, how great is that?
We sailed all week and unfortunatley it did not get as windy as promised I still managed to turn in a decent speed of around 28 knots, which gave me an eleventh place overall standing for that year. Annabel on the other hand was able to nail down a few 24 decent runs which won her a trophy and first place in the women's catergory for that year.
Craig sells the GT-131 GPS tracking systems and he is the time keeper for GPS speed (www.gps-speedsiling.com ) All times must be verified by Craig before he posts them on the world wide site. Dave French and I both have Locosys GPS tracking systems one of the few systems accepted by the world speed sailing association. You must in order to get an official standing have a Locosys GPS on your person while sailing the tracking cookie is then downloaded and sent to Craig via e-mail and he will veriify it and post your speed. He will then open it with "Google Earth" and run it through a program to clean it up (yes there are glitches so don't get too excited when the display shows 45 knots max speed it may turn out to be more like 30) and if you like post it on the world site.
If you are interrested in speed sailing I highly recommend you contact Craig and check out the two sites I have added. It is very thrilling to see your speed posted on a world site to see how you measure up. Also it can be a bit of a reality check for some sailers, as I have had guyys come up to me and boast about how fast they were moving. If you think you are that fast then make it official and you can really have something to boast about. I have found from personal experience that at about 33 knots it begins to bercome increasingly difficult to go faster. Once you break through that speed things start getting pretty scary.
A side note on this is that speed sailing can be a great event for newer sailers as well, and one does not have to jibe or turn to win. You just have to hang on an go fast.
One tip for quick sailing is to find the flattest water possible. Don
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