Camp Jules

So the other weekend I headed back up to Camp Jules. I got a lift up there with Jules' parents on Thursday night and Jules was coming up from London with Colin and the two Chris' after work on Friday. I spent Friday poking around the boats for a while playing with my new digital camera. I was taking a bunch of arty shots of the rigging on the 14 and playing with the depth of field. Check out the pictures at my picassa site. After enough playing with the camera I realised the wind was up and time was ticking away so I rigged up the laser and went for a spin. I got on quite well and sailed up to the sailing club and then had a run back down the lake (the wind was coming from the north which is a bit unusual). I was doing alright but it always felt like there was more speed in the boat given the wind conditions. I just wasn't quite getting it. Maybe I was sailing too hard up into the wind or maybe I didn't have the sail properly set for the wind. What ever it was, there was something not quite right, which is always a bit frustrating but oh well, I had a good sail anyway. Jules and everyone else got into camp a bit after midnight and we looked forward to teaching the two Chris' how to sail.

Saturday came and the wind wasn't really blowing. There was enough movement on the water to get the boats around but not much more. So we rigged the two merlins and got Jules and beardy Chris in the new boat while I took out vegy Chris. Colin jumped on the laser and had a little float with us. We managed to beat up to the sailing club again but the wind was dying. We turned around before it got too calm and started heading back. We had to jump from one patch of wind to the next, getting caught in flat clam in between. Colin was just sitting out in the middle of the lake going nowhere. We put up the spinaker and tried to catch a bit more wind with the extra sail but just ended up going round in circles as the wind floated around with no apparent direction. At least we did better than Beardy Chris who was helming the boat when Jules dropped the spinaker pole. The pole went with the excellent auto-retrive rigging and shot straight back into Chris's forehead. It was a perfect shot. On our boat, I lost the spinaker pole once but thankfully it didn't have quite as good aim and missed Chris. So we all got back to camp after a bit of a float. Adey had made it up for the weekend but not in time for a sail so we all went for a wander through the woods. It was really nice and calm in the forest. It was full of trees and moss that really deadened the sound and gave it a great sense of peace. It just looed amazing with all the lush green in the late afternoon light under a cloudy sky. It reminded me of why I enojy being outside so much. After getting a bit hungry we headed back to camp for dinner then cruised into town for a pint in the pub.

Sunday was even worse than Saturday for sailing. There was almost no wind. We ended up taking the tents down and cleaning up camp a bit. Then in the afternoon it looked like a bit of wind was picking up. I rigged the new merlin and went out with Colin to gauge the conditions while beardy Chris got ready to sail the laser. As it turned out the wind didn't pick up, it died quite quickly which left Colin and me floating around in the middle of the lake and Chris just sitting on shore watching us with Jules. So the weekend was a bit of a failure for sailing. I felt bad for the Chris' who had rented a car and come all the way up from London expecting to learn how to sail. As it was they did get out on the water but it wasn't like it should have been. I remember my first weekend up at the lake and the brilliant sailing we got in, racing away in the 14 by the end of it. But I guess they did get out of the big smoke and had some fresh air and countryside, which they really did seem to enjoy. So it may have been worth it for them but knowing what it could have been with some good wind, I still felt a bit sorry for them.

Camp Jules