So Sunday 10/16/2011, decide to head over to CCL and do some sailing, wind was 18-20 mph, gusting higher, and it was squirrely meaning it was all over the place, I was getting slammed 1 minute, huge dead air zone next minute, pulled out onto the beach to get my breath and was met by an excited guy who introduced himself with the words"do you need rail meat"? Turns out he's a cat sailor from Chesapeake Bay area, up in St Louis on a work assignment, and craving a sail, he has a Super Cat 19 along with a few other cats and we chat for a few minutes before throwing him into my spare harness and PFD.
Wind was out of the WSW at 1st and we had the length of the lake to play with, but it quickly switched to WNW, and then we were "tack training" as I like to call it, fast, short reach before having to come about. What a joy to have someone out on the wire who knew what he was doing, interestingly, he had a wristwatch type GPS, a Forerunner 305 by Garmin, and would call out our speed as we powered up, what a difference to know roughly what speed was being attained, we kept pushing the envelope but it was difficult with the type of wind we had. Nevertheless, we hit speeds of around 20 mph with him dancing up and down the rail, fore and aft, as needed to trim the cat.
Check out our GPS tracks.............http://38°43'08.51" N 90°28'50.60" W
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TurboHobo
H14T
H16
P18
G-Cat 5.0
P16
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