well that was easy. compared to maui, anyway. guess because its a bit flatter and not so windy. and the fresh water made a difference too. need to remember to lean forward a lot more to stop parking up. easy to have too much weight on the tail and stall. found out that they are formula fanatics over here so its not looking good for a decent slalom sailing. spoke to the organiser today and he said that if its windy, they'll sail slalom but the forecast is for light winds thursday and friday and building winds saturday and sunday. it all depends on the temperature differential between portland and the oregon desert.

for the blog followers (akka) we flew into portland two nights ago. direct from maui which was great. arrived at 11 pm which was a bit late for the kids. wasnt till about midnight that we got the rental car organised. luckily the SUV was more like a van. Has roofracks too, but the rental company wont allow us to use the roofracks. I told them that I had emailed them and let them know that I needed a car with roofracks. He told me that that is what I asked for and what I got, but could not use the roof racks. weird. anyway. roofrack are in in full use.

we then drove to janes cousins place. forgot to take the GPS off "keep away from motorways" setting. so we got there at 2am.

next day down to corvalis to see janes aunt and uncle. I picked up james from airport today and we shot up to hood river. we got here around 3pm and sailed for a few hours. was good to get the gear into fresh water. makes it nice an clean. hard to water start big gear though. the heat here is intense. its as hot as maui but its a dry heat. so keeping hydrated will be important.

now we are at a an apartment overlooking river. right next to the motorway. beer on the table but about to go into town for a meal.

more sailing tomorrow.