With enough wind, anything’s possible. Sailing through crud, snow and styrofoam? No problem. But with the forecast tomorrow of more reasonable wind it will never happen at St. George. Plus, the launch rotted out last night. We had to launch over a nearby bank, shovel some snow to find the ice, and then walk out to find a relatively clean spot to rig, where you wouldn’t loose a dropped nut in the snow.

And the snow? There was easily as much snow in the air as on the ice. Great clouds blew by, some with small tornadoes thick enough to obscure a boat. When we finally got up the guts to go sailing and found out how sticky the surface was, heading for the clouds was the way to go. Even in half a gale, the old adage “sail where the wind is” still applies, even if it meant not quite seeing where you were going for a white moment.

The sailing plate on this wonderfully convoluted lake was reduced today by thick snow in the lees, and the bizarre effect of the strong wind on the topography. In most of the narrow places we love on St. George there was no wind. It was as if it was so strong that a venturii effect was sucking the wind away from some places. You won’t hear any wind speed numbers, but suffice it to say it was all they promised and then some.
Boat speed numbers? Right up there with Denis’s last Thursday. But thanks to Jeff Kent’s superb engineering all three masts came back today in one piece. Score: CIBC 3, Wind 1. Not bad.

Three older DN’s set up but had a hard time in the snow. Linc Davis got some good runs with his Cheapskate on 1/8” runners. Long 1/8” stainless insert runners would have been perfect for today if they could be made strong enough. Seems like at least once a year conditions would call for such a runner. Perhaps it would allow sailing tomorrow. Alas, we’ll never know until someone builds a set.