An epic day at ARooBar that I almost missed.

First thing Sunday morning I awoke to find 15" of snow at my house and the freeway closed due to a crash with a minimum 2 hour delay. Figured I wouldn't make it through so went back to sleep. A few hours later and the freeway had been cleared and the snow is already melting, so it was time to make a move. Got to Astoria at noon and filled the truck up with fuel figuring the power may go out, little did I know how right I would be. From the gas station I could see liquid smoke on the bay indicating 50 to 60 knot gusts.

I hooked up with Dutch speedsailor Christian Piepers who had come North hunting speed. He's just got a NAVi so I loaded some new firmware and got it set up properly so he'd have no trouble storing data. Heading over the bridge, from Astoria in Oregon to the Washington side, the bay was white. I've never seen so much wind on the coast before.

We headed to the Marina to do a wind check, it was gusting over 50 knots on my wind meter with bursts of liquid smoke coming across the bay. Down at the launch site there were a few sailors rigging and a few out on the water with small sails doing runs. The tide was still dropping when we arrived but ARooBar was only showing 6 inches of tide surge from the approaching storm.

As I'd never sailed my speed gear in that sort of wind I opted for the 4.2 Stealth, a sail I had never used before, it was still new in the bag. Christian had no choice other than to run with his 5.1 Loft Blade, the smallest sail he had. Considering the wind it was quite warm with temps in the low 50 degree range but with driving rain squalls.

First run down the course was quite conservative to check the course/wind angle and see if I had rigged the sail correctly. Unfortunately the course was very square with only a small area at the end to turn off the wind before hitting the other arm of the sandbar. My boom was too low so a quick adjustment was needed. Sailing back upwind it was easy to stay in the flat water on the lee of the sand and get a good angle until a mega gust had my number on it and made life uncomfortable.

Next run and I still needed to adjust the boom and I wasn't getting much lift out of the fin. The board wasn't releasing properly and speeds were only touching 40 knot peaks. It took 2 more runs before I had the boom and mastfoot position dialed in for max speed.

Once set correctly the board went into slippery mode as it gets up on the tail and takes off, it almost got ahead of me with one foot coming out of the straps. The bear-away at the end was spectacular, high 43 knot runs showing on the dial with enforced dismounts before running the risk of hitting the sandbar. The key to high speeds was hugging the sandbar for 400m before bearing away in the gust for the last 100. For the first 400 I was running at 105 degrees to the wind at over 40 knots with the last 100 peaking over 44. Little did I know at the time they were the best speeds for the day. I ended up with PB's in every category and the first 40 knot 500m in the USA.

The only other sailor doing any good speeds was Christian. He was struggling with his sail and fin but still got close to 42 knots. We downloaded our tracks together and overlaid them to see where he was losing out to me. That's the great thing about GPSAR with a map of ARooBar loaded, you can use it like race car telemetry to see where you are losing time and adjust your rig and trajectory next time you sail to improve your times. Christian used it to great effect the following day.

It was great having a worthy opponent to speedsail against, you end up pushing each other to higher speeds and I'm sure together we'll set some really high speeds on the course. ARooBar wasn't at it's best on the day but another 10-15 degrees of wind angle and we'll see some monster numbers from the place.

With 40-50 knots all day we had no idea what was in store. That evening winds gusting near 125 mph hit Astoria and the surrounding coast. The siding from the hotel was ripped off along with sections of roof. All power was out, both mobile and land phones out, no 911 service, no fuel available, only one supermarket open with dry food, roads in and out cut off with mudslides and trees down, airport and port shutdown with 70 foot seas. The Columbia weather station situated offshore showed 70 foot seas and 120 mph winds on the dial before it disappeared into oblivion. With power lines and trees down on the road to the hotel it was an obstacle course getting anywhere. Christian hooked a power line and transformer with his truck and sped off down the road trying to dislodge it not knowing if power was running through it or not.

The road into ARooBar was littered with rocks, boulders, trees and all sorts of flotsam driven over the road by the high tide and big seas. You needed 4wd drive to get through with waves breaking over the road as you drove along. The crazy thing was there was no damage at all at the town of Chinook and the wind was still storm force for the rest of the day. I rode shotgun on the beach as Christian decided he had to sail and beat my speeds from the day before. Using the lessons learned from the data analysis, some rig tuning and the loan of an asymmetric fin he braved the elements like a man possessed. I'll let him finish the rest of the story in his posting.

It was another day before one road opened up out to civilization, after being caught in the storm of the century it was nice to get home to a hot meal and a hot shower.