> You might poke around the Priest Lake area in upper Idaho. The > upper lake is really enjoyable, with back country camping and > scenery to die for....
This is one situation where Eeisens fixed keel M17 might have a problem. Randy Graves and I were up there a week ago and we both had our kick-up rudders pop up going through the shallows at the entrance to the thorofare to Upper Priest. They might be able to slide through by heeling the boat, but it would not be a good place to get stuck if the wind was up. The main lake is worth the trip by itself, however. >Pend Oreille's weather, as well as that on Priest Lake, can change >rapidly. Randy and I can attest to that, also. We had extremes from hot sunshine to torrential downpours. Twice during the week we were up in the middle of the night shifting our anchor set-ups due to unexpected wind changes. We pulled out early on Friday after hearing severe storm warnings on the weather radio. A few hours later Priest was hammered with the worst wind storm in memory. Gusts of 60 to 70 mph caused major damage in the area. Trees down all over, and as of yesterday the area was still out of power. There were reports that during the storm, the water level dropped 2 feet in Luby Bay (presumable due to the wind pushing the water toward the other shore), then when it came rushing back they had serious shoreline damage. Amazingly, no boaters were injured. Not trying to discourage folks from sailing Priest Lake. This was the 4th week long trip I've done up there, and normally in the summer the nights are calm and clear, with a nice sailing breeze coming up late each morning and then dying out late afternoon. We just happened to hit an unusual weather pattern. We did get in some great sailing last week, though, even getting in a 28 mile day on Thursday, sailing off the anchor and right into the marina slip. Larry _______________________________________________ http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/montgomery_boats
