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Today, after a less than pleasant morning, I wasn't sure I was going to be able to venture more than a few feet from the bathroom. I am very glad, however, that I did. Ryan Owens and I took the opportunity presented by the thick lake ice and the WSW wind to snowkite out to Turtle island. We'd never done this before. Hell, we never had the opportunity to do it before. In the summer, there's no point in riding out there. The shore is covered in zebra muscles and there isn't much of a beach. In the winter, I've never seen ice-cover complete enough to allow the trip to happen.
I arrived at Ryan's mom's house - our launching point - at about 11am after having run a couple errands earlier in the day. This time, I'd not forgotten any of my important gear like last time when I had to borrow a harness from Ryan. We debated for a minute on which kite size to pump up. At first, we leaned toward using our 13 meter kites - typically reserved for light wind. Eventually, after looking at the sensors from around the NW Ohio and SE Michigan area, we settled on the 9 meter kites. It was the perfect choice.
Suited up for the 25 degree temps and the 15-19 MPH winds, we walked our gear down to the lake and pumped up our kites. A few minutes later, we had started our GPS units and self-launched our kites. Ryan was the first away from the wind shadow of the shore and I watched him as I spun my kite around to catch the wind. Ryan has style. It doesn't matter if he's on water or land. He always makes kiting look like more fun than you're actually having. And that says something. Kiting is the most fun thing that I do. Somehow, though, Ryan manages to make it look even better.
After I got a few hundred feet away from the shore, I was certain that we'd made the right choice on the 9 meter kites. We were well powered and quickly made our way down-wind to Turtle Island. It was a 6.5 mile trek to Turtle Island with only a couple of direction changes along the way. There was one large pressure ridge that stretched from about where Edgewater Dr makes it's 90 degree turn to Square Island on the east side of the river. There was another smaller one that must have been near the channel because I crossed it but Ryan didn't recall seeing it. Ryan stayed more to the west than I did. The ice was really well covered with snow and there are snow machine tracks crisscrossing the entire bay. I never once felt unsafe.
When we got to the island, we landed our kites and took some pictures as proof before we walked ashore and explored the island a bit. There's a structure on the island that one might loosely describe as a house. Though, once you've braved the cracked/rotting wood deck to peer inside, you can see that someone intended it to be a bar of sorts. There are 1/2 dozen mattresses littering the one room that we looked into on the first floor. There is also a basic bar that could seat about 10 people. Other than that, we didn't look any further. The other structure on the island appears to be the remnants of a lighthouse. Only a small tower remains. The house portion of the structure is just a foundation and walls that are a few feet high. Inside the tower structure, there's a busted-up spiral staircase that was probably very cool in its prime.
Having explored the island as thoroughly as we could given the snow cover, we walked back to our kites. We were fairly certain that the wind speed had picked up a bit, but it may have just been the fact that we were out in the open - miles from the mainland - and we could hear the wind in the trees on the island. Ryan launched my kite before self-launching his own. I waited for him just a few hundred yards up wind while he launched. I should have just took off and left him there. He would have caught me, no problem. In fact, he did catch me and overtake me in short order.
Snowkiting is unique in that you leave tracks in the snow, so I was able to figure out how far ahead Ryan was for a few reaches. I would watch for him to cross (ahead of me) the path that I was on. Then, I would count the seconds that passed until I crossed his path in the snow. At one point, just before we made it to the southern point of Woodtick, I was just over a minute behind him. Then, I had a great reach where I was headed SE while he was headed west. I made up 30 seconds on him on that one reach. I thought I had a great reach and a chance to make up real ground on him so I stayed on that reach. Unfortunately, the wind didn't cooperate. While I continued my reach way out to the east, Ryan went even farther to the west. From there, he dominated. He made it back to his mom's - our starting point - long before I did. He even trekked back to me before we made our way in to take a break.
We landed our kites a ways off-shore and walked in. As we approached the house, I complimented Ryan on his ability to read the wind and made excuses as to why he was able to get so far ahead of me. Those excuses included:
The heel-side edge of my snowboard needs to be sharpened (*that part isn't the excuse - that's just truth*) and I had a hard time getting through those sections of the ice that were sparsely snow covered. This was my strongest argument. The first few times I hit ice that wasn't well covered with snow, I would slide out and land on my butt. After a few of those, I cecided to go through those spots by heading down-wind a bit. That way, I wasn't edging hard against nothing at all.
My inability to edge hard on the slick-ice caused me to get blown over onto my face 3 times within 10 minutes. This was also true. I was getting so pissed that, at one point, I stoppped. I parked my ass on the snow. I let my kite land and I yelled "F**K YOU!" at nobody at all.
My goggles were full of snow.
The back of my jacket was full of snow.
My harness came unhooked
Really, though, it was Ryan's ability to read the wind better than me that got him way up-wind of my position. I can live with that.
Ryan's mom greeted us with two bottles of water - calling out, "Do you guys want some water?"
I replied, "Yes! Absolutely! Thank you!"
Ryan replied, "Beer? Do you have beer?"
His mom said "Yuengling?"
We both replied in the affirmative. She went back inside and exchanged two bottles of water for two bottles of beer. We stood in her backyard drinking a couple of beers and chatting with her. She told us that she had watched us all the way out to the island and then we disappeared. Presumably, this was when we were exploring the island. Then, she started to get worried because she hadn't seen us in a while. Eventually, though, she spotted us as we cleared Woodtick Point.
Refreshed, we relaunched our kites. Well, again, Ryan launched first while I had to re-walk my lines two times because 1) They were crossed somehow when I landed my kite, and 2) One beer made me too drunk to walk them successfully the first time.
The wind speed had slowed considerably while we were tipping our beers back. We probably should have just quit while we were ahead. Though, enough is never enough until you've had too much. Or... something. Enjoy some pictures from our adventure.
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