Heard from a veteran playa sailer (Fed 5) that devils can actually pluck you off the surface. After a bit of research, I'm less skeptical than I was. Any experiences on this?

Ahh.. this topic brings back some fond memories from Playas in the Spring..

Dust devils are really pretty fun to sail and in general you will slow down a little bit as you go in but you get a rocket ride comming out. There have been days at Playas where it was too light to sail but a dust devil would come down the dry lake bed and everyone would be just sailing circles around it.

One year at Playas, it was a moderate breeze and we saw this really huge dust devil comming down the dry lake bed and I signaled to my buddy (Doyle Wolf also in an Ice Flyer) that we should go and sail it. So we both headed accross the lake. I had a lot of experience sailing these and Doyle had none. When I got closer, this thing was just huge - probbaly several hundred feet accross and so dark that you couldnt see through it. It looked too nasty so I opted to sail out just in front of it but Doyle sailed right into it. As I went around the front, I breifly looked over and saw Doyle on only one wheel and in some sort of rotational manuever. I just rocketed out the other side and as I passed the dust devil, I looked over and saw Cathy (dont remember her last name) just merrily cruising along on a buggy with this giant black spinning clowd in the background. I wish I would have had a video camera because it was seriously wild and funny at the same time.

Doyle ended up flipping over and we looked at his tracks after and he had breifly left the ground (his story might have him spending more time in the air than "breifly"). Fortanetly neither he or the boat were at all damaged.

Liability disclaimer - all my experience sailing dust devils is with an Iceflyer which I think is particularly well suited becuase of its broad wind range (there are some extreme gusty winds involved) and with the Iceflyer, dust devils should be treated with a lot of respect and my advice would be to not sail them because of safety. I dont know about other types of boats in the dust devels..