The forecasts of marginal wind conditions were correct—except instead of the 9-14 mph prognosticated by several weather centers, the wind speed at 9 a.m. was nada—zip—zero! About 10 o’clock or so breezes started to come and go and permitted some nice runs across the lake; however, the wind did not become steady until just before I left about 11:00.

One of today’s interesting elements was that the lake had dropped over an inch overnight, if the watermarks on the rocks were correct. That necessitated launching further out from the dock to escape the lake bottom—or, to use Paul’s launching technique, just toss the boat further out away from the concrete edges! Don’s handy-dandy 17’ launch/retrieval pole was really put to good use, both for shoving grounded boats off of the bottom and for carefully placing and picking up boats at the start and finish of their time in the water. Kudos to Don for that invention!

From the “lessons learned” department, Clem discovered there was an obstruction about 20 feet out from the two vertical pipes in the middle of the lake, when he hit it with enough force to dent his keel. The impact hung his boat up for a period of time and he considered going home an getting his airboat for retrieval. Don again saved the day by trial and error ramming passes, finally hitting Clem’s boat with a straight-on ram just forward of the stern. We thought we heard tiny voices coming from Don’s boat yelling “Ramming speed!” as it knocked Clem’s boat off the obstruction, most probably a horizontal pipe attached to the two verticals mentioned above.

Today’s photos show several individual’s boats, but were more to test my camera than anything else, after Clem so kindly removed the dust from it’s internal sensor and made it like new again! Thank you, Clem, for exercising another of your seemingly unlimited skills and talents!

In one of the photos you can see Ron and Don struggling to maintain control of their boats in such marginal conditions. That’s pretty much how the morning went!

— Larry