Saturday, March 06, 2010

Dirty Half Dozen

Our cruel overlords at NOAA threw us an unexpected bone today. After a week of gale force gustiness, fourteen air-starved pilots staggered out to Kahana to feast for hours on the spicy north conditions. Maui Doug led the charge across the bay in his alien probe, with six pilots beaming to Kualoa and back by the end of the day. Thank you for your benevolent gift, most merciful rulers!

Maui Doug, Joey, Chandler, Scot, Jim and I were super stoked to make the crossing. It took a lot of tries for many of us, and others made many valiant efforts in vain. It was a bit strong and not quite north enough to call it an easy day for the crossing. Actually, it was pretty challenging. It was also great to see Reaper, Bonnie, Alan, Kamloops Ed, Duck, Sidehill Thom, Jeff, and Big Island John out there, as well as the usual assortment of family, friends and canine companions.

I included Chandler's pictures in my set since he doesn't have a good way to post them at the moment. Jim also took some nice ones, which I've linked to the right of this paragraph. If anyone else got any decent shots, send them over or post a link and I'll include them.

Tomorrow might be even better. I canceled my piano lesson in anticipation. See you there!

Update: lots of pictures from Bonnie and Pete here.

2 comments:

MauiDoug said...

Good eye JeffMc on catching the Pun sensor looking so good! :-) I was just assuming that it was too windy for any flying and didn't even check. That was one of the smoothest flying days at Kahana in a while for me.
That flight should hold me for a few days as I am still feeling the vertigo. Alex, thanks for the great photos and recap, you are a writing machine :-)

Alex said...

Doug, you are an inspiration. You wasted no time jetting across the bay and you set the bar high for the rest of us to try and follow. People took a wide variety of lines in their crossing attempts, and we saw plenty of people turn back in the pumping headwind just behind the Crouching Lion, as well as a few pilots barely squeaking in front of it and getting up from there.