Sailing on Ruth Lake

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I met up w/ some family and a couple friends here at Ruth Lake this last weekend. The sailing there was great. Ruth lake is man-made and sits in a long valley. There's a steady wind that blows through just about all day. It really rips in the afternoon. We made a lot of progress learning how to handle the boat out there this weekend. The steady wind helps a lot when you're playing around w/ the sails and figuring out what works.

One of the locals there told us to learn all the sailing lingo. I dunno what it's called, but we can turn across the wind, from an upwind run to downwind, much more smoothly now. That's tough to do in a strong wind because it wants to pull the boat over when you're pointed straight across the wind. We let the main sail way out as we turn across to de-power it and then leave it out for the downwind run. Yah yah... It's kind of exciting when we jibe, too, changing directions when running downwind, because the mast swings across the boat against the wind. It's taking some practace to control it so it doesn't just slam across to the other side. :-) I got hit in the head by it on saturday... that was funny. That's why we wear life jackets.

Here are a couple shots of our camp on the lake shore. We were on the Southmost inlet off the side of the lake.


And one of the water where the boat's parked :-). I think we got some action shots from the road up above the lake. I'll try and get a couple of those posted up next week.