Lake George Trip Day 1

I arrived at the lake at 5:30 and proceeded to rig for the forecast.  It was meant to be 15-20 all day so rigged the 7.8 first up under the light of the stars and headlights.  The cross batten looked a little wrinkled so I went to put some tension and snap, the batcam broke off the loop and couldn't be refitted as the pryde ones are stiched in.  I then thought I could extend the batten adjuster and place the loop in the notch on the end of the batten but the batten tensioner was siezed.  Then I had the idea to use one of my spare Avanti tensioners fitted to the loop.  I placed the gear on the sail for after I had rigged the other sails and proceeded to rig the 6.9 and 8.6.  The 8.6 looked a bit wrrinkled as well on the cross and foot battens and snap, brock the bottom batcam.  Carefully pulled of the cross batten batcam and it started to crack so quickly clipped it back.  Things weren't starting off too well.  I hooked the notch of the foot batten into the loop and had to make do with less shape down low. 

Soon Shane and Peter arrived and started to rig.  The wind starting to fill in a bit so I headed out at 7:50am on the 8.6 on the 150L board with the Lessacher 36.  After dredging through the weed in the shallows I was off and cruising and settled in with the target of 200km by lunch with a drink break after every 100km.  I didnt have any big 50degree fins and so had to stick to the middle of the lake away from the snot weed.  The first couple of hours were ok but I knew it would be a long day with the crusing speed on the big kit.  I stuck to reaching and focused on the FMS(Forearm Management System) of weighting the harness and gripping the boom as lightly as possible with regular back arm stretching and it worked really well without and blisters on the hands, the feet were getting shredded though.  I have given boots several tries in the past but just can remove my foot consistently in the gybe.

I made it to 190km when it started getting really gusty and so I headed in for a quick lunch.  Got back out on the water and just tried to keep moving.  There would be good stretches of wind with lots of glugging about in between.  I could see Tricky, Peter cruising up the top racking up plenty of km's as well.  In the end the wind died right out and I had to slog a few laps to make sure I was over 300km.  I only started to feel cold in this last few km's as I only had a 3/2 wettie on and it had become overcast.  I dredged back in just after Tricky and tried to get warm.  I packed up the 2 1/2 rigs and started shivering as I headed off with mild hypothermia.  I had to stand in the shower for a 1/2 hour to bring my core temperature back up.

It was great to finally get another PB, the first in about 7 years and I know what I can do mentally and physically the next time I have a crack in better conditions.  I ran the distance through GPS Results without the low speed filter to get the correct distance of 305.69 km as there was a lot of slogging.

Lake George 10-20 Knots

HD 150L 83W - Evo5 8.6 - Lessacher Duo Weed 36