We might have had a very mild frost last week, but this morning it was obviously the abrupt end of the growing season, as all the tender annuals outside are now toast.

The water tank is now back in action with solar collection -- set up a "fishguard" over the pump on Saturday and ran the pump yesterday and put it on the timer today -- need to add 20 more gallons to the tank (to counteract evaporation).  I also went and did the "winter seal" on the south (little) window, so that'll mean less infiltration.

found the lower limit of what I can handle in terms of cold yesterday -- on Sat, we had rain all day, but just before dusk it ended, and was still warm so I got out on the windsurfer for an hour or so and had a blast in very light (and sort of gusty) winds -- then on Sunday (yesterday) morning, the winds really picked up and I decided that 45F air temps shouldn't scare me away -- there was bright sunshine, but it just wasn't enough to keep me warm (or even stave off hypothermia.   I brought a thermometer and discovered that the water temp wasn't as cold as I'd estimated (right at 60F).  But windy 45F air temp was enough to almost immediately chill my hands (as I came out of the water).  The wind direction was different than usual -- basically it was blowing right off-shore as I tried to get out into it, which made it very gusty (and impossible to read/see coming).  Anyhow, after making it out into the windy channel beyond the point all of a sudden the wind really really started blowing super-hard and I was cold enough at the time that it was a bit scary.  Not immediately dangerous, just so fricking cold that I had an instinctive reaction to try to get out of the middle of the lake.  I had sailed a little ways out, but when the really heavy air arrived, I managed to tip the sail forward (keeping it luffing the whole time) and pivoted the board back around almost without moving my feet at all.  At this point I finally was pointed back towards the beach and safety and so just figured I might as well get as good a ride as possible out of it.  My fingers weren't really working that well, but I managed to hook my wrists over the wishboom and hold on that way.  Having been out regularly the last few weeks (and having dealt with really heavy air a couple times recently including at Martha's Vineyard where there were rolling swells as well), I managed to find that groove for a couple of seconds and got the board really flying over the surface of the water.  The direction I wanted to go was slightly downwind of a reach, and I found that it was really really hard to steer in that direction with that much wind (heading upwind always seems to work find when the wind blows harder though).  I managed to hold on until I was within 100yds of shore or so and when I fell in after that run, I was really surprised at how quickly my fingers had gotten numb.  The 60F water temp actually felt great on them (though it was pretty cold on the rest of me) when I fell off the board.  I intentionally swam for a bit to try to keep my circulation going, and realized that I was actually doing a lot better in the cold water than in the colder air.  I swam most of the way in and then felt another good puff of wind, so hopped up one more time and just couldn't handle the downwind tack (this time I was close enough to the rocky jetty that I had to intentionally bail, as I just wasn't able to quickly and accurately jibe around it).   Which is a really important lesson -- even though I *can* do a jibe turn now in either direction, I don't have the pinpoint precision (that I do have when sailing upwind) because of the balance and footsteering issues (it's really hard to *start* the jibe turn as there's no "opposing force" like with a normal reach (where the sail on one side of the board is counteracted by my bodyweight on the other -- as one starts a jibe, it's necessary to sort of "balance on the edge of a razor" without any way to really be comfortable/stable that I've yet been able to find)).  When I did finally swim the board/sail in and get out of the water it really felt freaky to peel off the life jacket.  Most of the rest of my skin had gotten used to the frigid air at that point, but my torso (which had been covered by a wet life-jacket) felt like someone had wrapped me in ice for another 10 minutes or so.  I don't know how low my core body temperature got, but since I didn't really even have any shivering going on, I suspect it wasn't that bad.  I do think I want a wetsuit though, because that sure was some great wind :-]