Chickawaukie Ice Boat Club

David Ross sent this comment about how we arranged the starts at the landsailing regatta. Any other thoughts?

There might come a day when we go to our web site and the archives are gone. The site itself might be gone as well. Huwei could buy wordpress, which would make us a national security risk, next thing you know it’s all darkness.
We published a yearbook for 2014 some years ago and everyone who bought a copy just loves it. Dave Fortier brings it out at the fall meetings and it seems to be in constant circulation. With that in mind we’ve decided to go ahead and publish four more books: 2009-12, 2012-13, 2015 and 2016.
So far the plan is to print three sets, one for the club archives (authorized by the board of directors) and two others for individual members. If you’d like a set, or individual years, let me know by the end of the month.
I’m a little embarrassed to admit to how much this is costing: one complete set will be around $375.oo. The individual books are around $100.oo, based on the number of pages and how many photos (color) there are. 2014 was cheaper because there were fewer pages. But look at it this way: it’s about what you’d pay for a lousy set of runners…
Imagine a new iceboater some decades in the future stumbling across these books and how much he will learn about scouting ice, organizing races and touring, and safety. Some of Lloyd’s best writing is in these years.

We’re trying to work out how best to have our fall meeting. It won’t be inside at Dave’s this time; we’re looking at a few spots around Lake Damariscotta were we can gather outside. Updates to follow.

Thanks so much to Karen Binder for putting some order to this craziness:

Click on image to enlarge:

Full results in spreadsheet format here.
Loring Regatta.xlsx

We did two types of starts this past weekend. In light to moderate air we did a dial-up start, which is similar to soft water starts. The boats get into a counter-clockwise rotation while there is a horn at three minutes, two minutes and one minute. At the one minute horn the flag is up and it drops at the start. We were at the most 15 boats and there didn’t seem to be a problem with traffic.

When the wind piped up on Sunday the speeds were to high to safely maneuver, so we did a standing start. Both starts were on a beam reach, which is really fun because once you start, the boat just takes off like a rocket. But we had to lay the boats head to wind along the starting line so they wouldn’t run away without us, or capsize on the line. It was odd the first time, and it took some brainstorming to figure out that it might work, and it worked great. Everyone pushed a little upwind, jumped in and bore away. It was very easy to avoid others because you weren’t constrained by going upwind.

It would have been very challenging to have upwind starts because there wasn’t enough room for a fleet of short tacking boats all bunched up together. So we really learned something here. And one of the great benefits of both these starts is that it is no longer a sprinting competition. I think in small fleet DN club racing it will be fun to try both of these approaches. The downside is you need a timer, or a watch on the outside of all your winter clothes. Counting manually, at least for this writer, was a flop: the flag dropped at forty seconds more than once. The upside is that there is plenty of good air and room to move back there so it really wasn’t an issue after all.

Notice how the lee side of Jim’s plank is dead nuts level, the boat is barely hiking, the springboard is in full deflection, and the windward end of the plank is doing all the work. Just superb! The mast looks pretty nice as well. Sadly, it did not survive the day. Final standings to be published soon.

hangar door opening https://youtu.be/kmK3-jRWNV0

https://youtu.be/y044e4yYhjM start of a race

George Wiliams photos https://www.dropbox.com/sh/y3bpk2ydszpr5x8/AACvBH_ONkZ7_KFtrK_ybTSUa?dl=0

https://youtu.be/2rqW6NK23j8 the view from Jim Turner’s Cheapskate on roller blades.

And George wanted the limrick:

There once was an airbase called Loring,
Who lay there quiet and snoring.
When along came a land yacht
and ready or not,
Loring woke up roaring.