Basic Concepts.

 

The December 2007 Windski expedition to Minnesota served as confirmation and validation of the original concept behind the Windski.

Sailing on snow is softer than sailing on ice.

The

10,000 lakes area of Minnesota, plays host to a verity of winter sports including ice boating, ice fishing, snowmobiling, skiing and the like. This winter it also included Windskiing.

The winter weather of the area is not that much different than that of Fargo ND made famous by the movie of the same name. Think snow, wind, and bitter cold although you could not prove it by our time there this past December.

Save for a few days during our stay, lead gray skies, and zero to six mph winds were the rule rather than the exception. On one of those exception days we traveled to Gull Lake, one of the larger lakes in the Baxter area. We were greeted to sunshine and 4 to 6 mph of wind with a promise of more. We had hoped to take advantage to the recent snowfall of the week prior and sail what we hoped would be a snow covered lake.

My 6.5 proved underpowered for me in the light air but made my 12 year old son happy as he sailed away leaving me standing on the lake holding his 4.0 despite his hanging on to a much too high a boom. �It�s ok Dad I got it.� Was all he said as he took off.

Late in the day I finally I got in a couple of runs, these were notable only as they reaffirmed the original design concept for the Windski as a snow sailing product. The frequent patches of wind cleared ice made for very uneasy sailing requiring constant attention to the rapid shifts in balance.

My son�s question to me at the end of the day �Tomorrow can we go find a field to sail instead?� A few days later we did just that, and the weatherman was saying 8 � 10 mph. That day and for the next couple of days we had a great time sailing together, chasing each other around in light air over fields covered by a foot of soft snow with a 4-inch thick breakable crust. It was just the two of us out having fun.

While conditions weren�t the best, this Christmas Windski holiday will go down in the books as having been fun and in the end shouldn�t that be the basic concept?

 

Post Script.

Many have asked why Windski didn�t participate in some of this seasons events, like the ISPO-Brandnew trade show, or this year�s WISSA, or a 2008 video shoot.

Simple, I am in the midst of building an off the grid, timber framed, SIP panel, hybrid powered home for our family.

It�s an undertaking demanding even more attention than sailing the transitions between snow and ice on Gull Lake.

Fun of a different kind.

A hui hou, Clive