Hey Dan! That was Duncan, who pestered me to mount the camera to my Fed 5 landsailer, knowing I was the guy most likely to produce dramatic(read crash) footage. It was a blustery day, most of the dirt boaters were wisely preserving their craft for racing, but I'm always looking for the edge, so I rigged up a 2.5 meter windsurf sail that I had cut for just these conditions. I was just getting up to speed when I was slammed by a 35 kt gust that I didn't see coming. Blew the front wheel out of the fork, an it rolled a couple hundred yards across the playa, into camp where it was picked up by another sailor before it hit the ground. I drug the remains back to camp, the boys rallied around, thanked me for the entertainment, and fell in to help throw her back together. I got her up to 61 mph earlier in the week in similar winds, and it's like a leaf blowing across a parking lot, on the edge of control, making lightning corrections trying to keep her on her feet. Top speed is downwind, and when overpowered, you have to bear away, just like cats. But the speed's so great that it's way easy to go by the lee and jibe violently. Which requires another instantaneous correction to recover before rounding up too far and going over. Hard! And at 50 or 60 mph, it's fairly easy to run out of playa, forcing one to head back upwind. Which if skillfully executed, requires blowing the mainsheet, leaning forward to put enough weight on the front wheel to get it to bite, turn at just the right rate, and then furiously sheeting back in, and stabilize your course, pinching to control the excess power. Huge fun, and I've far from mastered it! I was just exposed to this fine sport a year ago, at the last America's Cup of Landsailing, held each March on Ivanpah Dry Lake Bed, an hour south of Las Vegas. Since that breif taste, I've scored the Fed 5, run it for a week in the Alvord Desert in SE Oregon last Oct, and another 4 days back at Ivanpah last Thanksgiving. Still not a lot of seat time. I outfitted it with runners this winter, and got a few short but thrilling rides on ice. So I returned to Ivanpah this last March ready for more. Bought another, bigger boat, and a van big enough to drag 2 boats and all the gear necessary to keep 'em running. It blew every day, hard a couple of them. Hobiegary showed up in his new WRX, dropped into the Fed and looked like a pro. We all had a grand time, great guys, a fine community, much like catsailors. I'm as enamored with the social life as with the big adrenaline rush of zipping across the desert floor at warp speed, lying 2" off the ground. And like catsailing, there's always more to be learned, mastery refined. And it fits in nicely between backcountry skiing and catsailing, I've a gloriously full life! So you're all invited to join us next March. You've already got 90% of the required skills, and I've got a boat to lend you. If it can stand up to the abuse I give it, it'll serve you well!
