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Lake Norris Ice Breaker Recap
Well we heard from several folks before the ice breaker but in the end was basically only the hardcore wakesurfers that I know form Ohio showed up. That’s Jac, the Snyder’s, and the Gordon’s.
I met up with Jac at work Friday morning. The Snyder’s were heading down to Norris for the first time. They wanted to follow me so they wouldn’t get lost on the back roads of Tennessee. Does anyone else hear banjo music? It started to rain as we hit the road. A few miles south of the beltway we met the Snyder’s on I-71.
Turns out it was a good thing that the Snyder’s decided to follow us down to Lake Norris. Just as we we’re getting close to Cincinnati I got a call on my cell phone. Apparently one of my trailer tires was getting low. In the time it took to get to the next exit the tire had gone completely flat – the tire was toast. So I put on the spare. If anyone read my post about picking up the Mighty Enzo you’ll recall that I got a flat on the last 100 yards of the trip. The boat didn’t come with a spare, I’m glad I had one for this trip.
I also heard that one of my trailer lights was out. I happened to have a multi-meter in the truck so we checked the wiring out. The 7 to 5 adapter was bad. The other car was going to drive behind me and so we pressed on with one bad light.
Thirty miles later the check engine light came on. Dang! So I called my GM dealer and asked about the engine light. The service rep said just drive on in and they would check it. “No you don’t understand I’m in Kentucky.” After a little discussion we resolved that this was probably not a big deal and so we pressed on. (Now the light is off)
We got off I-75 at Lafollette, Tennessee. We knew there was a Wal-Mart where we could get a tire and a new 7 to 5 adapter. We they had the 7 to 5 adapter but no trailer tires. We got directions to two tire stores. The instructions were provided with a heavy southern accent and involved Shoney’s, Ya we’re in the south. I must have not translated Tennesseeish to English correctly we found a Shoney’s but not a tire dealer. We did find a wrecker shop. The wrecker shop was let’s say rustic and colorful, there’s that banjo music again. Regardless they drove out some place, probably near Shoney’s, came back with a tire, and got us on the road at a decent price and in short order.
All that stopping and running around was going to cut into our wakesurf time. We got launched by 3:00 PM and got a ride in for everyone. The air temps were in the high 70s and the water temps were in the high 60s. We got back off the water by 6:00 so we could meet the Gordon’s at Fast Freddy’s for dinner.
The weather report for the weekend was iffy. Saturday morning the sky darkened and the rain pored. It only rained for a little while and then cleared up nicely. We headed out to the Spring Dock for breakfast and to see if anyone else was going to meet us there. Well it was just us - no biggie. We had a good breakfast, bought some ice, and headed out to ballast up the boats.
This was the second time I had the Mighty Enzo out and we’re still trying to figure out how to set up for wakesurfing. I have 270 pounds of bag ballast in the port bow. The bag weight and mid ship port tank stayed in place for the whole weekend. We tried just stock ballast, the mid-ship port tank.
Then we filled the port locker with a 750 sack and a 400 sack, hmmmm… not impressed. Now keep in mind that I spent 2 ½ years tweaking the Lightning wake. I must have had the Lightning wake maxed out.
We eventually got to a set up with a 750 and a 400 in the port lock, the mid ship tank, the bag weight, a 400 sack in front of the mid ship tank and a 750 in the bow, and a crew of four. At about 11 mph I still wasn’t impressed, what’s the deal? Well, we stepped it up to 12, 13 and 14 mph and bang there it was, a nice deep pocket with plenty of push. That brought a smile to my face.
Last year and the year before I made speed runs on different boards. The idea was to see how fast you could go. The IS Blue is a pretty fast board. We rode the Blue at fairly high speeds. I had pretty high speed test results on a Trick Boardz Mojo and IS Red. Something just short of 14 mph. Our 150 pound surfer made a speed test on the IS Blue. We got him up to 16.4 mph sustained speed!
The wake was clearly the best that I’ve surfed on. However, I really don’t think we have the ballast dialed in. The Enzo sack is just over 1,400 pounds and we we’re at nearly twice the Enzo sack weight. I think we’ll try less weight but at higher speeds. I’m pretty sure that 750 in the bow is more weight than we need and I really don’t want to use that much ballast.
We got lots of riding in on Saturday without any rain. Saturday evening we hung out and had awesome homemade enchilada’s. The weather report for Sunday was rain at 1:00 PM. We got out for a Sunday morning wakesurf run. The rain was impatient and showed up around 11:00 AM. The last run was in the rain. We dumped ballast and headed back for lunch. That pretty much wound up the Ice breaker. I think a little bad weather is necessary for an ice breaker.
On the trip home we had rain off and on. We all met at the mid point for fast food dinner and then an uneventful return home. The season is officially on.
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