sailing & kayaking log: 2013-07-05 Round Lake

for the July 4th holiday this year, my wife and I joined several college friends at a lake cottage on Round Lake. this has become a little bit of a tradition, as I think this is now our 3rd year in a row meeting up there together.

Thursday afternoon we took the pontoon boat for a spin out on the lake and stopped to swim at the large sand bar.  we enjoyed some awesome food & drinks and fellowship, and then watched the beautiful sunset, followed by fireworks from all around the lake.

I woke up Friday morning, and gathered up my things to take the Sunfish out for a spin on Round Lake.  the wind was pretty calm, but I thought I might as well give it a try… but it was pretty much a drifter the whole way.  at one point in a shallow area, I just got off the Sunfish, and walked a couple hundred yards through the shallow area, towing the Sunfish along behind me.  this is a screenshot from my GoPro video camera (that I ended up just turning off).

I saw (4) other Sunfish out on the water, and thought I might try to sail over to them to say hello – but I just couldn’t make any headway in that direction, and I think they realized it just wasn’t enough wind to be on the water, as they each made their way back to shore.  you can just barely see a couple of their little triangular sails off in the distance.

after a short while, I gave up on sailing, and slowly started making my way back to the cottage.  a little bit of paddling was required to speed things along.  once I got back, I left my Sunfish more or less rigged and ready to go if the wind was to ever pick back up again, but it never really did.

while I was trying to sail, I used my new Aquapac (Micro Whanganui) dry bag to keep my iPhone dry, and then turned on my Runkeeper app to use the GPS to track my sailing movements.  I guess in theory, it would be a pretty neat result, but since it was such light winds, I basically just drifted in a large circle (sailing route shown with blue lines on the map below).

later in the afternoon, two of my friends and I each took a kayak for a spin, and ended up paddling quite a long way around the lake. I used Google Maps to trace our approximate route (kayaking shown by red lines) – it ended up being about 3.75 miles of kayaking! not too bad for maybe my 1st ever serious kayaking.

all told it was a great couple days spent on the water, enjoying time with old friends, and mixing in a bit of delicious cooking and cold frosty beverages.  the Sunfish sailing left a little to be desired, but sometimes the winds just don’t like to cooperate.