A Day at the Lake

Vaughn McMillan

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Spent Memorial Day at a local lake about an hour from here with a couple of buddies to do a bit of sailing. As it turned out, my back wasn't up to the task of riding on a Hobie Cat, so I stayed on shore and took a bunch of photos. (My back can only tolerate about 5 minutes of sitting on the floor with my feet in front of me, or sitting cross-legged. Unfortunately, those are the two ways you sit on a Hobie Cat. I lasted about half an hour.)

Anyway, here are a few pics out of several hundred, showing Mike (the pilot) and Donnie (the crew) playing around. Mike is the guitarist and Donnie is the drummer I've been playing music with lately.

Cochiti Lake Memorial Day 2013 - 10 - 800.jpgCochiti Lake Memorial Day 2013 - 15 - 800.jpgCochiti Lake Memorial Day 2013 - 18 - 800.jpgCochiti Lake Memorial Day 2013 - 19 - 800.jpgCochiti Lake Memorial Day 2013 - 20 - 800.jpg

I'll be interested to see what kind of video footage they got on the boat. They had three GoPro high def video cameras on board. One at the top of the mast looking down, one on the tip of one of the hulls, and one on Donnie's head...the DonnieCam [TM]. :D
 
Did they turtle?

In photo #4, it looks like the one hull is totally buried in the water, which makes me think that bad things are about to happen. :D
I've never been on a cat, just on things like a Laser. Bummer about the back...
Still, looks like some nice weather!
 
That does look like fun...also looks like if your back was still good it wouldn't be once you splash back down from almost tipping over! :eek:
 
Now that looks like sailing! Too bad you couldn't hang out on the boat, but great pics. I'd be willing to be you found a way to have fun on the beach anyway.
 
Did they turtle?...

Not on that pass, but they did go down a couple of times.

The first time was pretty benign...Donnie lost his footing in the trapeze and thus lost any counterbalance, so the boat just laid on its side. The fun started when they tried to right it. Just as it was standing up, the wind changed and flipped the boat over the other direction with enough momentum to fully turtle it with the mast pointing to the bottom of the lake.

The second time was a bit more work. The boat fully turtled, and they struggled and struggled to right it with no luck. Eventually a guy in a power boat offered them a line and they were able to right it with his help. When they got back to shore they found mud on the tip of the mast. It's kind of hard to stand one upright when the mast is buried in the lake bottom. :rolleyes: We also discovered when we packed up the boat to go home that the mast had been submerged so long that it was completely full of water. It was considerably heavier than it was supposed to be. :D

...Still, looks like some nice weather!

It was. Plenty of wind, and occasional cloud cover...perfect sunburn weather. The only downside was that this particular lake has a reputation for unpredictable wind patterns. It changes direction at the drop of a hat, so it can be difficult to really get a good flying hull run for any length of time. Mike did a good job of finding nice wind pockets, though.
 
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