Sport Today

I sailed Pistol River on Saturday 7/2 . It was solid 4.0 with a
good swell. The nice lady I talked to at Big Air windsurfing
(in Langlois Oregon, near Floras lake) said that she had been on
the water by 9 am every day that week. The bottom line is that
it's going off now! Get there and go sailing ! I did the south
coast on my way home from a windy week at the gorge. I had 4.0
days at Dougs, the Wall, and Roosevelt, but Pistol River was
clearly the highlight of my trip. I can't wait to go back!
Rich Schumacher

I spent 4 days at Floras Lake the weekend of June 16-19 and
again the weekend of July 4.  These were my first trips down
there; have friends working on their beginning high wind skills
and they had heard that this was a good place to practice.

The first weekend turned out to be the date of the second
annual Wind Wing Demo Day sponsored by Big Air.  Wind Wing
had a couple of their designers and sailors in along with
all their current sails.  They gave several talks on sail
design, then had the sails available for demos.  Saturday
evening Big Air put on a pot-luck barbeque.  They provided
hamburgers, hot-dogs, clams on the grill, and desert, and
everyone in the Floras Lake campground pitched in with other
stuff.  The wind wasn't great that weekend; mostly 6.0-7.0
sailing on the lake.  But the campground is incredibly
friendly.  Lots of families/kids.  Reminded me a lot
of the old days at Home Valley before they improved the
park, when all the sailors camped together in the meadow
next to what is now the sailing parking lot.

The wind was better the July 4 weekend.  6.0-7.0 in the
mornings going to 5.0-6.0 in the afternoons for three of
the days.  Other campers driving down to Pistol River
came back reporting "3.7 wind with logo high waves" for
Sunday 7/3 and smaller waves with 3.0-3.5 wind for Monday
7/4.  There were several couples camping at the lake with
one partner driving down to Pistol for high wind sailing
while the other worked on lower wind sailing skills at
the lake.  One or two were taking lessons from the local
instructor, Will, and had positive comments.

It so happened that a newspaper down there snagged a picture
of me teaching my kids to sail on Father's Day and published
it.  My wife had mentioned to the guy who runs Big Air (didn't
catch his name) that we would be coming back down.  He was
kind enough to snag a couple copies of the paper and give
them to us when we showed up for the second visit.

All in all, we really enjoyed the friendly crowd down in
southern Oregon.  Our friends made a lot of progress on their
waterstarts and my wife and I made a lot of progress on our
jibes with the flat lake water and ocean breezes.  And, as
Rich said, it seems to be happening down at Pistol.

All for now, Scott

--
Scott Killops                     Intel Supercomputer Systems Division CO1-01

(503)629-4325                     Beaverton, OR  97006-5771

I just wanted to mention another camping opportunity so Pistol wave sailors can
avoid the 1 hour plus Flores Lake commute.  Besides all the roadside
possibilities that exist, there is a very nice RV park/campground located
exactly 10 miles south of Pistol named WhalesHead.  The owners are really nice
and will tolerate a group of (sometimes loud) sailors.  We pulled in on Friday,
July 1st and there were 2 full hook-up sites available.  These are very posh
by campground standards.  Each campsite has it's own deck!  These sites were
$20/night.  The next 3 nights Bob, the owner, set us up at a primative campsite,
away from all the other campers, with an ocean view.  He even ran an extension
cord over for our motorhomes.  They charged us $15/night for as many people as
we could pack into the roomy site. The showers are clean and hot.  Overall, a
really relaxing place.  We'll be back.  They even have a tunnel under 101 that
takes you out to the awesome Whaleshead State Park beach.

So did we.
The people are really laid back on the South Coast.  Quite a contrast to
Portland and even The Gorge.

Berg