Chickawaukie Ice Boat Club

Courtney Keep and Richard Behr skated from Rockwood to Greenville junction yesterday and also had terrific luck.

All the pressure ridges were easily crossed and the ice was good enough for skating the entire way. And if it’s good enough for skating then we know that it would have been excellent for sailing. But it’s good to know, and once this recent dump disappears we may have something.

The pressure ridges at Moosehead are magnificent:

There are also rumors of big gathering at Schoodic. We’ll know more as the conditions reveal themselves at the tail end of this current cycle.

Who says Friday the 13th is a Bad day? Not if you’re iceboating, on a big plate with great people. Our gracious hosts, Dan and Ellen put on a wonderful day of adventure and food for us to enjoy. Schoodic Lake was hard and flat to the eye. The ice was grade 3-5 depending, some areas were a vibration hazard at speed.

We’ll call it a shake down cruise. Wonderful west wind made it possible to sail about anywhere, giving great views of Mt Katahdin and surrounding ranges. After an incredible lunch, provided by Ellen, we ended up at the south end at Lakeview, one tack up the length of the lake, took us to almost Dead Man’s rock before shell ice halted progress. A slow return back to Dans place, and a full shop tour of the new "last boat" was the ending to a grand day.

Sailing members; Dan Clapp, Jim Turner, Dan Stillman, Michael Young, and hospitality Coordinator Ellen Brattlof.

Friday the 13th on Schoodic

Who says Friday the thirteenth’s a bad kind of day?

Not when the wind finds the ice where you play.

Good friends gather, it’s hardly cold,

And Schoodic is rough as hammered gold.

Dan and Ellen opened the door,

Adventure and laughter and plenty in store.

Warm homemade chowder on a table spread wide,

And runners honed smooth for a bumpy ride.The ice lay hard as the eye could see,

Grade three to five ice and a westerly.

Chatter turned buzz when you picked up speed,

Just a shakey-down run for the boys and their steeds.

Katahdin rising clear and bold,

Watching the winter ranges unfold.

One long tack toward Dead Man’s Rock,

till shell ice suggested we’d run out the clock.Back to Dan’s shop as the daylight thinned,

Pigeons in the coop and the “last boat” within.

Where Clapp, Turner, Young fondled carbon boat parts

Ellen and Danny shared their love of arts.

Friday the thirteenth? Bad luck, they say—

Not on Schoodic Lake on a sailing day.

By Dan Stillman.

Denis , Lee Spiller, Frank and I sailed a Grade 1 on Sebago a few years ago. Call it base line ice. When you have a grading system of one through ten, there needs to be a one, and that day was it. It was so rough and bouncy that the constant deflection of lee’s plank eventually zippered his hound right down the mast. I was well ahead by the time Lee’s mast went down and the thought of going back through that junk was daunting. Fortunately Denis and Frank are great at repairing nearly anything, so I just sat tight and waited.
The whole point of this digression is to allow us to argue over today’s rating. It came down to either a two or a three, so it’s getting a 2.5. We know it wasn’t a One because nothing broke. That appears to be a pre-requisite to be awarded a One. But let’s just say that if anyone sailing today had dentures, they’d be eating soup for dinner.
We did find a fairly clear lane for a fast run from the Narrows, where the wind shut off, all the way back down to the inlet creek. The two Whizz rounded up just at the bridge while their battered crew went to the Cafe for lunch. A downwind landing with a low bridge in the foreground is not for the faint of heart.

To add insult to injury, by the time we’d finished lingering over our lunch the ice had softened and the wind had died, trying to find its new position in the SW. We shoved through the slush back to the pits for slush runners, hoping for the predicted SW to fill in.

Bob MacEwan, Linc Davis and Dave Hoder had some good runs in spite of the conditions, Two young guys, Chris and Vlad from Portland showed up with an Iceabella design, from Sweden that Chris built around a windsurfer rig he had. It was their maiden voyage.

He built Cheapskate runners, made some good rig modifications, but by the time they showed up the ice was soft and the 1/8” Cheapie runners didn’t have a chance. They were mildly discouraged, to say the least, but a sympathetic sailor loaned them a set of slush runners and the boat just took off. Vlad characterized the feeling as “intoxicating”. Sounds like they are “in”.

Moral of the story is: never underestimate the value of slush runners, and no matter how poor the ice, a day on the lake with boats and buddies is never a bust!

Get out the snow shovels…

The surface is pretty good considering all the abuse it endured over the course of this snowy winter. There is 13” of ice, a couple of inches of which is currently slush. The temps tonight are due to drop into the mid to low twenties and that, combined with the refrigerator effect of all the cold mass below will probably firm it up. No promises, but a few sailors will show up and see.
Light wind in the morning, so no rush.

The access is excellent. The ground felt soft today but if it’s frozen in the moring we can drive on it. We don’t want to be leaving ruts.

On Schoodic Lake, the MDI guys will be sailing from Dan Clapp’s house tomorrow. Conditions sound similar. Check with Michael Young for details.

If the snow forecast for Friday night misses us we will leave boats on the ice. Otherwise, we are back to our day by day MO. Moosehead is wet out and needs to digest that snow before we can get our blades on it.

More than one person has asked about alignment techniques recently and if you look at who’s coming sailing these days, it is lots of new helmets and goggles.

Lloyd Roberts taught us all to use the dial indicator on a rod, but the triangles are a better way. Here’s a brief demonstration of how alignment triangles work.

This is just a demo set up. The plank is eliminated for clarity.
The boat is sitting on the plank, the runners are in the chocks, the bow is blocked up to the hight simulating the bow runner in place.
Each runner is placed on the fixture guides on top of its triangle., one per side, as shown above.

There is a scribe mark on the triangle indicating fore and aft location. Square down from the pivot bolt to this line. Be sure to set the bolt head so one facet is plumb, and register both runner bolts from the same side!
Load the boat with the skipper’s weight and check the string.

Looking closely at the photo above you’ll see a string that runs between the triangles. There is a scribe line that’s dead square to the fixtures in which the runners are set. In the photo above you can see that the string and the line are not together. This is mis-alignment and must be corrected with shims on the runner, or worse case, chock moved. But it must be done.

Here you can’t see the scribe because it is directly under the string. This is the result you want. It might take a few fittings and shimmings to get there, but the sailing experience will be well worth the effort.

Speaking of Sailing Experiance, the weather is looking good for Fri-Sat-Sun on Damariscotta depending on how the surface winds up at the end of tomorrow’s rain. There’s not much rain, and the lake needs no further wetting out, just a cold snap and it looks like Thursday night will do it. Not much wind until later on Friday.
We’ll have a look Thursday afternoon and report here. It will be a crap shoot for Friday anyway. It will be either Lake Farm or Vannah Rd.