SUP204

The goal of this training session was to get my long paddle in and to become more comfortable in rough water. Honestly, I was hoping for bigger waves given the wind, and I was disappointed when I arrived to find more of a choppy situation. I haven’t seen the big four foot rollers since the spring runoff, and I’ve come to the conclusion that you need high water against a strong current with extreme wind     in order to produce the big waves.   However, despite the lack of surf, this proved to be a challenging paddle for other reasons.  Despite the smallish 2-3 foot waves, the NW wind was a sustained 34 km, with gust over 50 km. I’m still a newbie, and haven’t been paddling all that long and this was the first time I’ve seen the wind rip water off the river surface and make spray like a mist. I’ve seen it in the ocean and Great Lakes but never on the Red River.  I was at the end of a down wind run (which is actually heading up river) and making my turn to return t...