The picture is not great, it looks much nicer in real life.
Today was a low-wind day. We spent the morning visiting Vela, and then on a road trip to Mount Hood. Mout Hood is ~ 3.4 km high, gets about 10 m of snow a year, and is the only year-round skiing spot in the US.
In the afternoon, we went out on a Starboard Gemini tandem board that Big Winds has down at the Event Site. The board is about as wide as a formula board, but twice as long. Supposedly, Jim Drake designed it so he could take his wife out windsurfing with him; after sailing it for an hour, I can definitely believe the story. Compare to the Kona Mahalo tandem we have at home, the Gemini is huge and super-easy to sail.
It took us a couple of wet tries to figure out how to tack on it, but afterwards, tacks were dry and decent. Winds average readings were around 14 mph, with gust of 19. We had taken a 5.9 and 4.7 sail out because they were ready to take. We actually did get the board to plane for part of one run; the rest of the hour was nice and mellow low-wind surfing. Lots of fun, albeit of the low adrenalin kind. Maybe we'll get some more of the same tomorrow - unfortunately, the forecast predicts winds below 20 mph again.
