I feel the immortal words of Carl, the greenskeeper, best convey the essence of the experience on June 2nd at the St Simons Surf sailors WindFest event: "I'd keep playing. I don't think the heavy stuff is gonna come down for quite a while."
Saturday morning, the day of the event, tropical storm Barry was dead smack centered on St Simons. The event, as it was intended, got rained out. A bitter pill for those who had traveled from Charlotte, Atlanta, Columbia, Augusta, and Savannah. No Taste of Windsurfing for the newbies, no swap meet, no Aerotech/Exocet demo riding, no beach party -- but, hah, did we cower in our little hotel rooms whining like little girls? No, we did not. About 3pm, at the signs of the first let up in the deluge, a couple of us went to the beach and things didn't look THAT bad: No people, a gray sky, a tolerable rain -- and about 35 knots of wind directly on shore. Time to rig up!! Soon the word spread across the island and, in no time, the crowd appeared. Well, OK -- it was about 15 of us. We did have a heck of a great session for about 3 hours in between bands of rain and a teasing, clearing sky. The right gear was anything smaller than 4.2. A couple of 3 point somethings were out there. It was a big-time session even though it was low tide and we were trapped inside the sand bar. Everyone was having a blast -- pun intended. (The thought did cross my mind about 2 hours into the session, as we had 12 sails out there in truly nuking conditions: Where are the kiteboarders? But, eventually, two kiters did show up and one did fly the kite but never went out.) Anyway, about 7pm, the wind dropped off. We were all pretty much exhausted anyway. As we gathered on the beach, smiles all around, the setting sun radiated this grand double rainbow straight out over the open Atlantic. We fired up the grille and ended a great day as we enjoyed a few beers, burgers, and dogs right there in a cookout at the Surf Sailors' compound. ( A few pics in a new album in the photo gallery.)
Sunday, the day after, was bright, sunny and hot. Winds was still 17 to 25+ but side-off enough to give us pause, but not to stay off the water. More of the local Surf Sailors showed as did Steve and Marty Gottlieb, the Aerotech/Exocet distributors, who had stayed overnight. We got our chance to ride all the latest Exocet boards. I even did some lessons. Turned out to be a greta weekend. Not the crowds we expected but now we're ready to do it again.