Windsurfing in Morgan Lake, NM USA-North America

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Boondocks. Just boondocks. BYOEverything, and pack it all out. There's hardly even a bush in sight, let alone a building. It's just you, the sky, some sheep, a thousand square miles of dirt and sagebrush, the hot tub, and the hot tub heater. (With any luck someone may have installed some outhouses since I moved away six years ago, but don't count on it.) So why would anyone go there, and what's it got to do with this website? Because the hot tub is two square miles in size, it's nearly a mile high (think jetstream), the hot tub heater can be seen from many miles away, I've never seen the Columbia River Gorge blow as hard as I've seen New Mexico blow, and where ELSE ya gonna sail barefooted -- COMFORTABLY -- in a snowstorm?

The water temp runs from about 60F/15C on the cool side to nearly 90F/32C on the warm side ... in the dead of winter. In the summer it's almost too warm to enjoy because the air is also hot. The reach is roughly a mile (maybe two miles in southerly or northerly winds), the chopswell gets up to waist-high on the really good SW-W days, the shoreline is sand and grass, the bottom is sand, the distant scenery is beautiful mountains, and the wind MAY be very strong with fronts and/or the jetstream. It's gusty, but where ELSE ya gonna sail if you're in the Four Corners area chasing snow sports or passing through and it's blowing 20 - or 40 -- knots all day? The wind is side-on, so you can't get blown any distance away. You can walk back (on land or in shallow water) to your kids playing in the water (yes, even in January) in minutes from just about anywhere you'd blow ashore.

It is NOT a destination windsurfing spot; the wind is just too fickle. But I'd guess it gets good shortboard sub-6.0 wind a few dozen days a year, with many 4.x and some great 3.x days. It's a great place for sinkers because you can't get blown away or need to walk/swim too far if the wind craps out. One local has snapped two plastic Tiga wave boards in half with his constant big air, and it's easy to get loooooong jumps under a 7.0 with the speeds attainable in the knee-high chopswell. Because of its friendly shoreline and warm water, this place is very user-friendly even when it's blasting way past one's ability. Too bad its wind isn't more frequent or more steady.

Tip: When the wind quits, most people go ashore, stand around or huddle in their cars in the cold, and miss much of the wind. Savvy sailors jump in the hot tub in the lulls and just wait until the wind resumes. If you doze off, as I have in the middle of the lake, the next blast of wind will wake you up. Ya wanna lie in a hot tub, or shiver on land? Duh! Guess who gets in MUCH more sailing on the really holey, cold days? But the wind can blow well into May, maybe even June, when temps can hit 100F/hotC, so it's not all cold weather sailing. Fall can also be good sailing, but summer ain't. Frigid midwinter winds would be sailable temp-wise, but they often skip right over the water even when Farmington is blowing like stink.

Town (Farmington, near the NW corner of NM) is just 15 minutes away, with restaurants and motels, but camping at the lake is phenomenal. Many people have never seen that many stars, there are virtually no mosquitoes (this is NM!), the nights are usually cool, you can see adequately to windsurf all night (the power plant looks like an entire small town right on the shoreline and their power is free; think "thousand points of light"), and it can blow right through dark and into the next day so you'll miss some good shreddin' if ya sleep in town.

There's also very good bass fishing, and in calm weather, some power boats. For more info, Google Morgan Lake NM, Four Corners, Farmington, etc. And include SW Colorado snow sports; there is good skiing an hour away.