Chickawaukie Ice Boat Club

Here are the minutes from our meeting this past Sunday. Thanks to Secretary Turner for compiling them poste haste:

MINUTES CHICKAWAUKIE ICE BOAT CLUB SPRING 2025 MEETING

4/13/2025

Members in attendance

Bill Buchholz Linc Davis

Jim Gagnon Bill Bunting

Jim Turner Sandy Butterfield

Mike Young Dan Stillman

Dave Fortier Ben Fuller

Bob MacEwen

Meeting was called to order on a cold and rainy morning inside the Camp Kieve dining hall. The first order of business was presenting the newly-created “These Boots are not Made for Walking” award via FaceTime to Paul Chamberlain. The award acknowledged Paul’s recent feat of dragging his DN twelve miles back to the launch across a windless and slushy Moosehead Lake without cleats! Paul accepted his award graciously.

Next a Media award was presented to Dan Stillman for his continued output of wonderful videos. We are fortunate to be entertained and archived and the videos just keep getting better.

Jim Gagnon presented the financial report (don’t forget your dues) which was followed by a brief discussion regarding insurance ending with the agreement that the current status would remain.

Ben Fuller announced that a memorial service for recently deceased John Eastman would be held at the Apprentice Shop in Rockland on May 11. Updates and details will be posted on the club website.

Meeting was adjourned and after some merchandise and club swag was exchanged attention shifted to lunch featuring homemade baked beans and pot pie , and large fillet of baked salmon. No one left hungry.

Cheers,

Jim Turner

Now’s the time to tidy up your gear, take care of those items of maintenance and repair on your list, and sharpen, oil and store your runners. Here’s how:

Edgy Friends 2025 youtu.be

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Most iceboating videos are exciting, fast and noisy. After all, that’s what we come for. But what we don’t always see is the rest of the story. Here’s the story of what has become known as the Moosehead Death March, with all due respect to the boys at Bataan, of course.

No Place Like The Pit Moosehead Lake 4•7• 25 youtu.be

Now, if successful expeditions on Moosehead were routine, they wouldn’t be so special. A lot can happen out there on a big remote lake and so far we have been very careful with how we approach it. But if we didn’t push a little we wouldn’t have had all those great days. Moosehead is our crown jewel and every year, no matter how bleak the season, we live by the mantra: “there is always Moosehead”. Take it seriously, but take it when you can and when the conditions allow.

Hope to see you all at the meeting on Sunday!

Sorry for the short notice, but this Sunday April 13 we’ll have our pot luck lunch and business meeting on the big deck at Camp Kieve in Nobleboro. If you haven’t been here before, just find the camp and keep coming in as far as you can and park. Can’t miss it.

The meeting will begin at 11:00 followed by what has become an excellent feast. The forecast looks perfect, so we’ll be able to meet and eat outside.

Here’s one photo for the road, the guys becalmed on Moosehead yesterday. Conditions deteriorated considerably as the sun came out and the wind died. With that in mind:

Aretha Franklin "Nessun Dorma" LIVE 1998 youtube.com

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The boys at Moosehead got a little greedy today. Light wind forecast kept all the sensible sailors away, if such a person actually exists in our world. One more run to Kineo seemed a goal too good to pass up but by the time they were about seven miles up the lake the wind died and the ice went soft. Who among us has not hitched the sheet around your waist and made the long walk home? And what better place to be on a fine spring day than out in the middle of such a grand lake, the only sound your boots digging into the slush.

And speaking of silly sailors, here’s a note from one to another dated 1960 proposing a downwind sailing experiment.

Sounds like fun to me. How about chasing that ballon all the way from Kineo the Greenville? Oh, right. That requires wind.

The ice there is still thick and tight to the shore. Snow is coming tonight without a hopeful recovery any time soon. But if there is a lesson we can all learn from Moosehead Boys is that it can never hurt to try.

Stand by for Spring Meeting. We’re looking at either this coming Sunday or Sunday April 27. Waiting for confirmation from Kieve.

In spite of some snow patches and a lousy forecast, the eternally optimistic dynamic duo drove all the way from New York state last night to set up boats at Greenville. To power the day, they first had a heaping helping of the fabulous corned beef hash at The Dockside.

With a moderate SE wind ahead of some incoming weather they ran all the way to Kineo. Most of the pressure ridges have settled down and some have completely healed.

The bay at Greenville had scattered drifts and some areas with lots of snow, like this:

While other sections were clearer the further north you go:

There was a clear lane about the width of Loring’s big runway that runs south from Kineo for a few miles. Loring tactics came into play as the two boats short tacked their way back south in the narrow lead.

We all know the old iceboater’s addage that you won’t get to sail if you don’t show up. Today is an extreme example, but with extreme odds come big payoffs. Congratulations to Paul and Jeff for showing us all just how it’s done!
They are standing by to see what this weather will do to the surface and will check in as soon as it passes. The forecast is not promising, but, hey, it didn’t look good for today.

BRAVO!