{"id":74,"date":"2001-08-07T23:51:41","date_gmt":"2001-08-08T06:51:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/?p=74"},"modified":"2008-09-10T23:52:08","modified_gmt":"2008-09-11T06:52:08","slug":"windsurfing-the-balance-between-flight-and-falling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/2001\/08\/07\/windsurfing-the-balance-between-flight-and-falling\/","title":{"rendered":"Windsurfing: The balance between flight and falling"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nAugust 7, 2001 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d The sailboats drifted back and forth before me like targets in a carnival shooting game.<\/p>\n

There were dozens of them, packed together. The jagged line of sails formed a nylon mountain range in the middle of Lake Lanier.<\/p>\n

“This is beautiful out here,” William Fragakis declared as we stood on the shoreline at Vann’s Tavern Park, a picturesque peninsula in Forsyth County, just below Browns Bridge Road. “This has got to be one of the prettiest spots on the lake.”<\/p>\n

Fragakis’ smile had little to do with the boats, the beach or the blue sky \u00e2\u20ac\u201d although I’m sure he found those aspects of the day appealing. No, Fragakis’ grin was all about the wind.<\/p>\n

\"\"Fragakis is a windsurfer. And when Mother Nature exhales, windsurfers get excited, especially on Lake Lanier during the customary dead calm of summer.<\/p>\n

Call it dummy’s luck, but winds were blowing hard \u00e2\u20ac\u201d double-digit-miles-per-hour hard \u00e2\u20ac\u201d on a certain Saturday back in late July. That’s when I got my first taste of boardsailing \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and several tastes of Lake Lanier.<\/p>\n

“This is a rare day for the summertime,” said Fragakis, 41, a member of the Atlanta Boardsailing Club<\/a> (ABC). “Stinkin’ rare.”<\/p>\n

Fragakis and his friends were ready for it, too. Amateur meteorologists all, they had been watching the progress of the weather pattern that produced the wind for weeks. Vann’s Tavern was abuzz with boardsailors.<\/p>\n

“I watch the Weather Channel a lot,” admitted my 28-year-old instructor Brian Butkus, an ABC member from Marietta. “I never paid that much attention to the weather until I started windsurfing.”<\/p>\n

The weather and water were welcoming and warm on that July day. No wetsuits necessary. Perfect for beginners, who often spend more time in the water than on the board, and a nice break from the norm for Lake Lanier’s windsurfing regulars, who know all too well that the lake is at its windiest when its water is at its coldest.<\/p>\n

For fair-weather Lanier visitors, windsurfers are often lumped together with other lake legends like water moccasins and giant catfish. Tales tell of their existence, but no one has ever actually seen one.<\/p>\n

“It’s almost like a secret club,” Fragakis said. “On nice, calm days you don’t see us. But come here in February. The wind’s blowing 15 to 20 (mph). It’s miserable weather, but the parking lot is full.”<\/p>\n

They are there for the same feeling: the delicate balance between flight and falling. And there can be serious speed, too, powered by nothing more than the wind and some basic laws of physics.<\/p>\n

“You can totally disconnect and make it religious if you want,” Butkus said. “It is just so peaceful and relaxing. And at other times it’s very challenging. I really liked that it wasn’t just press ‘start’ on the Jet Ski and go.”<\/p>\n

\"\"No, it’s a much slower process than that. Believe me, I know.<\/p>\n

My lesson began with just my body and the board. No sail at all. No use trying to sail when simply standing is a challenge.<\/p>\n

I learned quickly to keep my eyes focused forward while on the board. If you look into the water, that’s where you’ll end up. So after several minutes of playing a one-man game of ‘king of the mountain’ \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and losing \u00e2\u20ac\u201d I finally got my lake legs underneath me. I stood there and stared out toward the horizon, until the wind or a wave decided it was time for me to take another swim.<\/p>\n

Then Butkus added the sail to the equation, and my learning curve began to balloon.<\/p>\n

First, one must learn how to raise the sail out of the water with the uphaul cord. Pull too lightly, and you fall in the water head first. Pull too hard, and you fall in backward, with the sail following close behind.<\/p>\n

Eventually, however, both sailor and sail stand in relative balance. Wind fills the sail and physics takes over.<\/p>\n

When it happens correctly, it’s obvious. It’s addicting. And the rest of the day is spent trying to recapture that feeling.<\/p>\n

For me, as it is for most beginners, the feeling was fleeting. But it was worth falling repeatedly to find again.<\/p>\n

I did that dance for hours. Sometimes, I’d fall immediately. Sometimes, I’d fall after some delay. But there were definitely moments of motion. I was moving slowly, to be sure \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the experts, it seemed, could sail to Buford and back in the time that it took me to cover a few yards \u00e2\u20ac\u201d but I was moving, nonetheless.<\/p>\n

\"\"The water was white-capping by early afternoon. Winds blew heavier than anticipated. Several people flew kites back on the shore, which grew smaller and smaller as I drifted farther and farther away from it.<\/p>\n

I wasn’t trying to do this, mind you. But the wind had other plans. And Butkus and I hadn’t gotten to the how-to-turn-around part of my tutorial yet. I was a little wet behind the ears. Figuratively and literally.<\/p>\n

But there were other newbies \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the ABC was holding a clinic on the lake \u00e2\u20ac\u201d who had floated farther off-shore than I. That made me feel somewhat better about my state of affairs. Still, there was the rather important issue of returning my board, and my body, back to dry land.<\/p>\n

I sat on my piece of plastic and pondered my predicament. And then, suddenly, the wind changed.<\/p>\n

I aimed my craft toward the same sandy peninsula from which my journey had begun. And I ended up nowhere near there. I arrived instead at a rocky embankment several football fields down the shoreline. The water, at least, was shallow there, and I waded back to the others, dragging the board behind me.<\/p>\n

Rocks. Sand. Land is land, I suppose. And besides, that’s where the wind wanted me to go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

August 7, 2001 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d The sailboats drifted back and forth before me like targets in a carnival shooting game. There were dozens of them, packed together. The jagged line of sails formed a nylon mountain range in the middle of Lake Lanier. “This is beautiful out here,” William Fragakis declared …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions\/76"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}