Made it Work

Sunday 10/9/2011, Empire Beach

Tried hard to get a session in this weekend. With the forecast downgraded to 10-20 from the SW. Down from earlier forecasts.
Saturday was a miss as the winds were marginal and not quite enough for consistent planning.
Early Sunday it was blowing directly side shore maybe a little side off by a few degrees. I went to the beach to sip on my morning coffee when it looked windy enough with blowing sand covering any tracks in the sand. Hey this is windy enough if the sand is blowing I can sail. But there were very few whitecaps on the water, wonder why?
It was one of those mornings with a very warm wind blowing, about 72 degrees at 8:00 in the morning. This is October 9th and this isn't normal.
I had to rig my 6.0 and try it since it was a warm bluebird morning.
Put on the steamer wetsuit and headed out to a decent 2.0 hour pre-breakfast session winds were slightly side off so the further out I went the steadier it was.
Conditions were fairly flat for Lake Michigan maybe this was a localized wind coming off of the sand dunes?


Session: 8:00 - 10:00
Gear: 6.0 Ezzy, 101 liter RRD
Conditions: Inside flat, outside flat with small rollers.
Weather: Air 70 degrees, bluebird morning, water 57 degrees.
Wind: S-SSE between 10-20 mph estimated
Schooled: Fun session pulling off some downwind 360s on the inside with helitacks on both tacks.
Moves of day: 2 360 downwinders on thr inside sand bar
Image: 3 hours after the session a hike up to the top of Empire Bluff to see the venue below.