Unofficial NTWR Trip to Bird Island Basin

Once again, windsurfers from the North Texas area headed down to Bird Island Basin for the Thanksgiving holiday. I'm not really sure when this tradition started, but I've been part of it for 10 years now. And every year has been a good time. This year was no exception, the crowd was just smaller.

Lynne and I headed down after work on Friday, November 22nd. We spent the night at a Walmart in San Marcos, then finished the drive on the 23rd. After stopping for groceries in Corpus, we made it to Bird about 2pm on Saturday. We wouldn't need the truck keys for 7 days.

Some of the crucial items of interest: We finished off the homebrew keg on Wednesday. The peak wind speed recorded on my weather station was 72mph sometime Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. We cooked two turkeys weighing a combined 31 pounds and Brisket weighing in at 15 lbs over a three day period.

Since a picture is worth a 1000 words and we all know how much I like to talk, here's some pics for your perusal. Click on the thumbs for a full size image (use your browser's "Back" button to return here).

Lynne and I left Garland on November 22. We stopped in San Marcos for the night, and finished the drive on the 23rd. Here's a pic of our 15,440 lb rig at a rest area on I-37.	Here we are setting up on the 23rd. Notice that no one else is camping. There were zero campers when we arrived. Very weird. Don said it had been a bad fall for the Lagunatics.
The Palapa of Knowledge at Worldwinds. Palapa of beer seems more appropriate. We emptied quite a few here. Don is hoping to make some improvements in 2003.	One of the few sunsets that wasn't obscured by clouds. (J.O.)
Nigel arrived on Sunday. We did get some sailing in that afternoon, but it was a big gear kind of day. (J.O.)	Lynne and I relax after getting Camp Dog set up.
Hard at work on Sunday afternoon. Light winds, so these two are watching the Cowboys game.	Doug showing off his secret fold down fin compartment. Nice trailer.
Monday started off nice, but with very little wind. Max and Lance found Jeff's firewood pretty quickly.	Since there was no wind, we drug the boats off the trailer and did a big paddle up one side and down the other of the actual Bird Island.
Stewart Legler showed up about midday. Then Tim Valenta swung down from Mustang Island to check out the homebrew sitting in the trailer.	Max lazing around in the sun. He just loves Bird Island.
We could see the forecasted fronts starting to roll in late Monday.	Started getting cold on Monday night. We'd really be hugging the fire by Tuesday afternoon.
By Tuesday morning it was windy and cold. Check out the whitecaps. You almost never see those at Bird because of the shallow water.	Nigel preparing to head out on Tuesday. Air temp - 50F, water temp - 65F, winds - low to mid 20's. It was the best day of sailing we had.
Lot's of digital zoom to get this one of Doug blazing in. He was on a 93L Mistral with a flattened out 5.7 sail.	Jeff got this pic of me, Nigel and Stew playing tag. I'm in front... heh, heh (J.O.)
I think I actually made this jibe. (J.O.)	When the water's too cold, you land board. Here's Nigel on his Outback pulling off another jibe.
After watching Nigel do it, I had to give it a try. This was my first attempts at land boarding (note the helmet). I eventually got the jibing sort of worked out, but that's an awfully small deck. pic taken by Nigel	Even Jeff Olds gave it a go. In the background, you can see the Blackburns rolling into camp. pic taken by Nigel
The Blackburn Clan rolling in. This was their inaugural Bird Trip	And Camp Blackburn (with park signs in the foreground). They've got one of those slick hybrid trailers with the pop-out ends. They kept the windward end closed.
Camp Nigel - he gets an amazing amount of stuff in the back of that Dodge.	Stewart looks cold. Or maybe he's just worried about the next jibe.
Brad Staal heading out on Thursday. Light wind required big gear, and check out all the neoprene. Only he sailed that day.	Brad and his diesel VW. He's taken the passenger seat out to make gear hauling easier.
We had a really good Thanksgiving spread, even sitting down together. I smoked a 20lb bird and the rest was potluck. We ate way too much. (J.O.)	But even after eating too much, we still had a pile of leftovers. Lunch for Friday! (J.O.)
And what's a good meal without a good campfire afterwards? (J.O.)	The weather started getting nice on Friday. No wind, but good temps and some sun. Here's Lynne and the dogs hard at it.
This is the last sunrise before Lynne and I left. It's probably just as well if you remember the old saying "Red Sky Morning, Sailor's take warning". Blew like stink...	Here we are about to head home on the 30th. Lynne wanted to drive. Note the No Parking sign she parked in front off. She'll never learn.

BONUS PIX
Here's some stuff from the 2001 Thanksgiving Bird Bash
(All photos by Jeff Olds)

Here's the post Thanksgiving dinner crowd. We had invited all the other campers in the vicinity to join us. We put down three turkeys and a ham that night. There were ~30 of us.	Corpus local Robert (with Spot the dog) and Dallas local Bob McCord get the vintage gear out for a bit of fun.
There are turkeys in the smoker and big fry pot. And since the oil is hot, how about some fresh potato chips.	The usual late afternoon routine - gathered for happy hour and sunset watching. I believe this was Thanksgiving day (note the cookers all set up)
We do like our sunsets at Bird (mostly because we usually don't get up early enough for the sun rises).	And another... The 2001 trip was pretty clear. We only had a couple of cloudy days.
I suspect I took this picture of Jeff since Lance is standing in the foreground. The water was quite high for the early part of our 2001 trip.	Lynne and I heading off for a paddle on one of the few non-windy days. Of course, the wind came up a bit after we headed out.

For the camera geeks, my pics were taken with a Nikon 5700 - a 5 megapixel digital camera with 8x optical zoom. I took most pictures in the "Normal" mode (2560 x 1920), then resized them to a 640x480 for this website. On most of the sailing shots, I used the camera's digital zoom feature to pull the subjects in. I should have been using a tripod on Tuesday, but that might not have been enough considering the wind. Since I'm not a camera geek, that's about the extent of my knowledge on what I was doing.

I used MS FrontPage to build this site, and the auto thumbnail feature to build the thumbs.