The morning temperature at the lake was 37. Here at the coast it was grey and drizzling. How does one get motivated to go iceboating on a day like this? But Jory was waiting in the dooryard ready to go and with nothing better to do than go chase some ice.
We finally turned the wipers off a few miles from the lake, convinced we’d find a giant slush pit. Dave Godine was already there, walking on the ice, and the first thing we noticed was that his feet were firmly on top of the surface, not down in it. Dave had brought some planks, so we spanned the moat and went for a walk, drilling holes as we went. The surface was excellent, scoured of slush and down to the black ice. We found 9″ most everywhere, so dashed back to set up. The breeze was coming right down the lake at about ten mph.
In the early morning funk, my shrouds had been left at home. Not sailing on this beautiful plate on a warm spring day was too much to contemplate, so the mother of invention took over. The trailer’s safety chain hook fit into the t-ball hound socket, a gang of rope made shrouds, and some lashing around the plank and nose brought it all together. I had to stop regularly for “tuning” as the stretch was incredible. But we got to windward just fine, and beat up to the north end. There are some cracks and drain holes scattered about, and the ice up north is rougher, but just off shore from the landing the ice was a 9.
We had a long and deep downwind run along the shore, searching for the pit area as there are no good landmarks. Although there were small areas of thin slush, the body of the late remained hard all day. Even after the sun came out. Amazing.

Looks like another weather nail-biter for the weekend. Rain and snow through Friday morning, then teens Friday night. Sunny and breezy Saturday. How many weeks now have we had this same pattern? Anything could happen. We’ll try to get some good news posted Friday as soon as we know. We could be on any of the northern lakes that still have thick ice.