Lee Spiller plans to round up a scouting team on Sunday to check the lake for Hard Way possibilities. Skate sailors have been touring the lake recently and report pretty good conditions, with only one major reef.Refresh your memories on the rules and the fun from past runs. We’ll update the minute we get the report.
Winnipesaukee “the Hard Way” | New England Ice Yacht Association
After nearly a month without sailing, the natives were getting restless; the snow and cold relentless. With no recovery in sight the only option was to hit the road. Wisconsin was looking very good, but since The Doc Fellows Regatta had been held on Ashumut Pond on the Cape last Sunday, we decided to head there in spite of its tiny size. Jim Gagnon and your correspondent found the weather forecast amenable, packed the boats and took off. But just as we were leaving, Steve Madden posted a very intriguing report for Great Herring Pond, just this side of the Canal. It was twice the size as Ashumut, with some nice coves and an ideal orientation to the predicted S-SW winds.
Sport is about emotion, and iceboating is no different. One of the good ones is that combined sense of thrill and dread as you finally round the last turn in the long road to the lake and there before you lay there the ice. It could be snow, it could be water. We saw before us a long plate of smooth grey ice. Steve had tried to chop through the plate, but gave up at about six inches. We found an ice fishing hole, chopped through the skim and measured 18”. How the heck does a small shallow lake do that?
Ramblin Roger made the run up from Maryland in under twelve hours, and Henry, Kevin and Jack came from nearby making for a nice little fleet.
Take a look at the little boat with the red sail. That’s a vintage, classic, barn find original condition Alcort Cheapskate that Jim discovered moored on the beach at the far end of the lake. We stopped to investigate, and its skipper Barry came down to say hello. It had been in his family since he was a kid. Then he ran back up to the house and came back with a RC model of the boat along with a Christmas tree ornament of the boat on yet a smaller scale:
The wind was a building nicely, so we took the model for a sail:
The ice had this nice pebbly texture, and was a tad soft but it made for nice grippy turns. We would deep reach to the bottom of the lake, round our very challenging leeward mark and then beat back up.
Note the buoy just off Roger’s bow, tucked in behind the point. Just the kind of mark we cruising racers like.
The temps were in the high forties today, and puddles began to form as the wind built into the high teens. Now, instead if ice chips in the face it was warm water. Gloves off sailing. The ice between the puddles began to look like the long beach at low tide, the furrows sculpted by tides the tide pools throwing up nice rooster tails as we turned.
Joachim showed up with his wing boat Surf and Turf and we all turned to and helped him set it up. We had to leave early today so we could get back to Maine in time for the Great Wet-out, but saw him take off and get some fine bursts of speed. I hope the rig survived the gusts…
Sailing Great Herring was a first for us, but we hope you guys down there keep an eye on it in the future. An interesting mix of visitors cam and went all three days. Pat, a refugee from Katrina, has settled in to a nice life in Mass, cooking gumbo and other New Orleans specialties. He had his first walk on the ice, as well as his first sail. We put him in a DN with a few instructions and a helmet and off he went. He rounded up and stopped after about 100’ and complained that his neck hurt. Imagine that! But he showed me the scar on the back of his neck where he’d had spine surgery from an accident while working on a lobster boat.
We also had a guy from Pakistan who took lots of pictures, but he’d just had hernia surgery so didn’t dare try sailing.
Wetting out is under way; stand by for cold early in the week!
Two days of 40-50 F temps, heavy winds, and 2-3 inches of warm rain should wet out anything on top of the ice we have in Mid Maine. Cold coming Sunday night and Monday.
A couple of snow bound Mainers will head for the Cape tomorrow to sail Great Herring Pond and Ashumet Pond Wednesday and Thursday. Anyone who wants to join in please call Bill at 207-975-6980.
And if you need help trying to figure out the weather, maybe this will help:
It’s late fall and the Indians on a remote reservation in South Dakota asked their new chief if the coming winter was going to be cold or mild.
Since he was a chief in a modern society, he had never been taught the old secrets. When he looked at the sky, he couldn’t tell what the winter was going to be like.
Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, he told his tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect firewood to be prepared.But, being a practical leader, after several days, he got an idea. He went to the phone booth, called the National Weather Service and asked, ‘Is the coming winter going to be cold?’
‘It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold,’ the meteorologist at the weather service responded.
So the chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more firewood in order to be prepared.
A week later, he called the National Weather Service again. ‘Does it still look like it is going to be a very cold winter?’
‘Yes,’ the man at National Weather Service again replied, ‘it’s going to be a very cold winter.’
The chief again went back to his people and ordered them to collect every scrap of firewood they could find.
Two weeks later, the chief called the National Weather Service again. ‘Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold?’
‘Absolutely,’ the man replied. ‘It’s looking more and more like it is going to be one of the coldest winters we’ve ever seen.’‘How can you be so sure?’ the chief asked
The weatherman replied, ‘The Indians are collecting a whole big load of firewood!’
Finally a day warm and balmy in 20’s, no wind. Time for a stroll on good old Chicky. John E. and I , armed with axe and drill headed from Heron Beach (Lloyd’s) out to the recently open water, now black ice, in SE corner. Old hard walk on snow drifts up to 8″ thick, rare slush pots where water coming up through snow ice, and spectacular 1 Ft + new black ice. Drilled and chopped here and there, bare spots, under drifts, etc. Could not strike water anywhere. No ice fishermen, no snow mobile tracks, just our footprints on a previously untrodden surface of this planet, always a thrill.
