Chickawaukie Ice Boat Club

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.

Here is a great picture from the glory days on the Hudson demonstrating what happens when your runners are too tight in the chock and you go up in a hike.

They say runners should be just tight enough such that the front of the runner slowly drops under its own weight.
The folks standing on the plank are probably yelling back to the skipper, trying to warn him of the crack which is about to swallow the steering runner. Hopefully the yacht behind sees the crash and has time to change course.
Just another fun day on the ice.

Speaking of which, Friday is shaping up to be a good possibility at Damariscotta, and then again Tuesday-Wednesday next week.
Stand By!

Vannah Rd at Danmariscotta Lake has 16” near the ramp and a surface that will recover rough. but very sailable. The four inches of slush is firm, not too wet. A footprint barely registers.

It probably won’t be ready before the snow comes mid-week, but if it misses and the cold that’s predicted shows up, we might have something to write home about.

Up at Moosehead there is four feet of ice, as shown in a video going around of a guy drilling through. The top of the auger is at his chest, standing on the ice, and he is not a midget.

This is the surface close up which can be seen in the broad view from The Birches web cam. Looks almost sailable as is, but 4-6” of snow is threatening there as well mid week. Good news is rain comes the day after. And with so much ice we have some wiggle room. That huge thermal mass will go a long way in firming up the slush over nights just at the freezing mark. Kelly’s Landing is always hungry at this time of year and happy to have us!

Here’s a video from Dan Stillman from last week’s outing on Echo:

Sailing a Patch of Echo Lake 3/3/26 youtu.be

So, we’re no where near done.

The other day on MDI, the island guys found a small section of Echo Lake that had gone through a decent recovery.

Dan Stillman tess us:
"Mike Young called Jim Turner and me after spotting an acre or two of ice peeking out from the northern end of a crusty, snow-covered Echo Lake on Monday evening. Jim and I scrambled, and twelve hours later we met up.

Mike was testing his newly tuned bendy mast. Jim had his custom-converted blocart out for a shakedown cruise. My DN was dialed in, sporting new transport wheels and a set of fancy pants quick pins.

We had a wonderful time chasing each other, often carrying enough speed to slice through 100′ patches of crusty snow. After a few hours, encroaching slush signaled that the fun was winding down, and by 1:00 we called it a great day.”

Jim Turner was sporting a set of DN runners on his BloKart and by all reports the upgrade in performance over the stock runners was significant. The only downside was when he hiked the runner would rotate over center and when he brought it back down he’d land with the runner upside down facing aft. He used the axle housings to attach the runners. Sounds like some sort of stop is in order.

This is how it is these days. Chickawaukee is showing ice today but without cold nights to firm it up we are still waiting on the shore.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/03/02/move-over-olympics-iceboating-is-the-hottest-sport

Still more reporting on the Van Nostrand Cup Regatta.

Ice recovery around here has been postponed by yet more snow.

Warm temps coming could be a blessing or a curse.

We’re not done yet!