Somedays you have great ice, nice breeze, sunshine and a fun bunch of iceboats cavorting around a beautiful lake. Aligning all those disparate elements can actually be called iceboating. The sailing part is just the frosting on the cake. And speaking of frosting: the six inches of Plymouth ice was frosted with an inch of light unbonded snow this morning at ten. Jory and I walked halfway across to where we knew there was thin ice a week ago but found nothing but thickness. But the 15kt breeze was working on the snow, packing into tight little drifts. Scott Woodman and Jory set up their boats anyway and had a go at the snow.

It was pretty good sailing as long as the wind held, as we needed the power to blow through the thick stuff. But the double edged sword here is that so much wind over snow that can stop a boat can cause some boat busting. Indeed, as Jory turned rather sharply to line up for a drag race next to Yellow Bird he spun out, the mast came down and his chock was removed from the plank. How the mast down and chock off are related we have no idea, but it was the end of the day for Icywood. The anodizing on the top of the chock had not been ground off so the glue didn’t stick, and the bolts didn’t fully penetrate the the chock. Two strikes and he’s out.

We took turns sailing Scott’s new/old ride Yellow Bird. It’s probably a 7/8 model of a Northeaster, and a delightful pocket skeeter. The parts are small and easy to move, and she sails very smooth and easy. With the DN rig she is a good match-up with Icywood, but it will take decent conditions to really get her dialed in.

Did you just hear “decent conditions”? Don’t get your hopes up. We are not going back to Plymouth, but hope the snow forecast for Sunday will miss us and allow some of the lakes that were open during the last dump to thicken. Wind forecast for Saturday at this point is nil anyway. But, we’ll continue with the legwork, see what we can find, and post it here.