Adra out of service.

This doesn't pertain directly to the big Great Lakes trip, but it provided valuable heavy weather experience and makes for a good story.
I woke up this morning to a lovely gusty wind. Whole trees were moving. I looked up a live weather report that said 20mph winds today and thought. Boy, now I can really see what ADRA (PDR #172) and my 40sqft lug rig can do.
I had been sailing on Onondaga Lake in Syracuse, NY the previous 2 days and the boat was all ready to go in the truck. The day before my brother and I hit 5mph in a puff, so that was the top speed to beat.
It was a nice day and my friend, who enjoys a good sail, had off of work and I offered him a ride. Then we got out on the lake. Now THAT was a ride. The minute the wind hit the sail as we left the protection of the channel we were doing 4mph. Then it gusted and the GPS hit 5.3 The Bow started to dip dramatically and we both edged back to keep the boat sailing dry and level. This went on for about oh, five minutes. The whole time the sail was just aching to rip the sheet out of my hand (no traveler or anything.) After somewhere around five minutes a large gust came up, slammed the sail forward and drove the bow under. A quart or so of water washed into the cockpit before my friend could jump in back to level us out again. The boat suddenly became unmanageable and I had to let the sheet go. The sail swung into the wind and we both stared in amazement at the 15degree bend at the mast partner. My 1-1/4" EMT mast had wilted during the gust and (thankfully) depowered the sail some. After significant struggling we were able to come about and beam reach back to shore,
the sail constantly bouncing between luffing and being overpowered. We wound up beached on shore about 1/3 of a mile down the lake from where we started tired and laughing our fool heads off. We both knew we had gotten off easy with a bent mast. The thing that really got us laughing though, was the GPS reading a top speed of 6.3mph. And the boat hadn't even gotten on plane. So, morals of the story
-Know your limitations (Or try to find a less dangerous way of learning them)
-EMT is fine for a mast in lighter winds, but won't hold up in a HEAVY gust.
-Always build your sail and spars so you can trim the sail flatter.
-No matter how small you think your sail is, if you're going to be out in strong winds you should have a reef point.
-Learn from your stupid mistakes, or else you might not get to make them again. I will say that I don't think we were in any real danger. If Adra had gone over it would only have been an uncomfortable swim and a bit of work to get her back upright. The waves weren't too bad, and there was a watercross tournament going on in part of the lake so someone might have come out to assist, although that part I'm not so sure about. Still, I won't be doing that again. At least not until I re-design my rig. :P

In other news, my boat trailer is being modified this week and the the big boat move is scheduled for June 13th. So, anyone coming for my sister's graduation party will get to meet Cassandra. I'm getting pretty excited about it.