So how are your water levels doing?

I was at another sailing club that was quite eerie. There were signs on the beach showing the jet-ski zone and the sailing zone - and they pointed towards a 17km stretch of dry lake bed. The lake had been completely dry for years and the sailing club has long gone. The water skiers had bought their own lake, which was an oasis in the outback.

The big lake near my place has been dry for a few years until this season. Some of us have been windsurfing on it, which is an interesting experience. It's so flat that when you're 2 miles from the launching zone you are still in thigh-deep water and you can't get the centreboard down. The shortboarders have built ultra-shallow fins and sail out to the end of the fences with them, then they stop, put their normal fins in, and go sailing. If the wind shifts to the south and pushes the water to the north, the lake water in the north advances 10m up the shore; you leave you car near the water line and it's almost an island when you get back if there's been a shift. The lake is about 17 miles x 3 miles, I think, and almost nowhere more than 70cm deep at the moment, although decades ago it was high enough to race dinghies for some time. It's also sometimes got an amazing combination of steady wind and very flat water, so you can get the boards behaving in ways they normally never would.  On the whole expanse of water there's probably never more than half a dozen windsurfers, and that's rare.  Rather surreal, almost spooky, and quite wonderful.

Anglian have got a balalncing act on their hands to try and keep  everywhere but Pitsford as full as possible while they are doing work on Pitsford.