Chickawaukie Ice Boat Club

Sabattus Pond is a lovely shallow pond of some 4 X 1 miles on the Northern edge of Lewiston Maine, a nineteenth century mill town. We have no resident ice spies there and I believe have never sailed there before. However our ace itinerant ice spy Lee Spiller sniffed it out last week, miles of grade 9 with lots of grade 10 black ice several inches thick. The indian name Sabattus roughly translates to “wild goose chase”, but we didn’t know that.

Despite forecasts of meager air we congregated from as far away as New Jersey to a lovely small town park with a sheltered anchorage for fleets of a dozen plus ice boats both days. Wednesday a scratch race course was set up for a reaching race and a fleet of 7 DN’s drifted around the marks three times. This was repeated with diminishing numbers of competitors for three races, enough for a regatta! Commodore Fortier won two out of three and declared the event “The Commodore’s Cup Regatta”. (A conflict of interest was raises its head). Competitor Raymond came in first in race one and second twice and pointed out that because Fortier cannot run he had given him a head start on race two which Fortier won. Fortier claimed he won race two by a large margin, much more than the head start he had been given. Perhaps the board of directors could take this up come Spring.

Friday was forecast to have a steady 6 mph breeze all day and indeed in the morning there was a promising zephyr moving off the ice and through the town park. The NEIYA gang set up real pyramidal race marks but by the time boats got on the ice the breeze was already dying. “T” Theiler demonstrated his top ten magic by seemingly effortless cruising around the course while most of the rest of the fleet had trouble. One race was enough and the ice boating mostly became standing around in the warm sun and talking, an important part of iceboating.

In the meantime temporary MIT professor Buchholz arrived with his retinue of seven students who are receiving instruction in iceboat construction assembling four DN’s from materials kits that Bill carted down to Cambridge in his Whiz trailer. They seemed a pleasant lot, apparently from Indonesia or therabouts. They brought 3 complete DN’s with them plus Bill’s Dn and it took a while to get everything put together by which time the wind had pretty much gone. One them came out onto the ice and I let him sail “Cheap Skate” which he did successfully, including figuring out what to do when the sheet pulley let go, he just held the boom by hand and returned all smiles. I don’t know how his classmates made out but hope we will get a report from Porfessor Buchholz.

Saturday is providing light snow turning to rain and heavy rain Sunday onto about two inches of ice on Damariscotta and Chickawaukee. Forecast accompanying high winds may blow us all back to start. However cold is forecast for next week perhaps punctuated by snow, Winter is starting.  Lloyd

All eight of the MIT students, including four from Singapore, had their first taste of iceboating yesterday. The smallest, lightest member of the group got well wound up in spite of the light air conditions. She is from Singapore, and wondered if the huge, flat expanse of flat ice was made by some kind of truck. Leave it to an engineering mind…The rest of the group rotated through four DN’s and a Gambit until the wind took the usual afternoon nap; one kid admitted to being a bit scared, which is a good sign.
Chad, T, Guy, Fortier, and others got in a few races. They were joined by Dave Clapp and his son of the Von Clapp Family Iceboaters. New sailor Brett from New Jersey was there, as well Neil and friends from Cape Cod. Most of the CIBC regulars made it as well. Oddly enough, there was yet another green sail in addition to the two below.
Anybody know who it was?

Here are the students with the MIT fleet. Tip of the helmet to Professor John Brisson for pulling together this amazing outing: everything from rental cars to boats to long underwear!

The wind backed around to the west late in the day. A handful of boats were still out there to catch it. The day was just so beautiful, the ice deep and magical, that you just wanted to linger. The late breeze came in at maybe 6-8, just enough to get a hike now and then. Three of us lit out reaching for the north end when your scribe came to his senses and realized a long walk home might not be the best way to end the day, no matter how beautiful the lake, so we drag raced back near the pits in the near dusk.

Today brings snow, slush, rain, you name it. Tomorrow is all rain here, snow inland. Don’t know about New Hampshire. Maybe they’ll get lucky. Meanwhile, here’s some good news from the long range forecast: Polar vortex to usher widespread cold, snow chances into US during mid-January Hopefully this will help heal the weekend’s damage.

This morning was a lovely replay of Wednesday’s fun on Sabattus, with even more boats and skaters in bright-then-hazy sun and slightly more wind than before. (but still not much!) I hope Lloyd or Bill will post the news and pictures. The Press was there again.

but at 1pm, i took off to follow a tip from Lee Spiller, that keenest of bird dogs. He had sent me this picture with the simple caption, “perfection”:

so what’s a poor guy to do?…..but blindly follow….i spotted Androscoggin Lake about a half-hour north of Sabattus, but couldn’t find a way to get on it….there are a number of shabby, almost-abandoned towns around Leeds, Maine, but no roads led to the lake, which looked fabulous in the afternoon sun to the East of the road…..finally, I pulled into Stinchfeld Beach Rd, and after walking across a little snow, found indeed the Holy Grail! the quality and extent of the ice seemed to go beyond anything I had experienced… here is the map:

https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?hl=en&hl=en&authuser=0&authuser=0&mid=ztF2YST1dLcw.k-laZVQLhVyM

i was already pretty sore from the morning, but it seemed like a simple question of how many Advil one had to take at bedtime, so i strapped on the skates, chopped thru 5 inches of monolithic black ice, and skated south for a mile until i reached snow ice….then i turned north and tried to do an end run on a pressure ridge running fully across this arm of the lake…at the East end was the unusual estuary which feeds the lake…and has open water…so i ate humble pie, skated back to the launch, took off my skates, walked the woods and re-entered the Northern plate…this too, was absolutely skater’s heaven…I then worked over to the islands, which were blocked by pressure ridges…then, while picnicking, I was surprised to hear human voices, carried by the gentle SW wind, and saw two specks in the hazy sun-path skating my way. They turned out to be two new friends from Sabattus, Mark Brandhorst and his friend. Refusing my food, they easily navigated the island pressure ridge, and disappeared into the darkening eastern horizon….Lee had reported that that Eastern arm of the lake was where the 10+++ ice lay…..Hells bells!….what pizaz those skaters had!….just when i was just feeling Ratty’s longing for his cozy sandbank….or was it Mole?

So I blasted after them, trying to follow their scratches across the pressure ridge and….feeling my meager pizaz leaking away…. alas… headed for the launch….soooo….let’s watch what this ‘mixed aggrivation’ has in store for us, and then sail when it cools again….Our season started late, but….jimminy….what an amazing one….

Eight students, building four DN’s, in two weeks. Half of them are here for the event from Singapore. Can it be done? Can’t say for sure just yet, but with the kind great attitudes and razor sharp minds in attendance I wouldn’t bet against them. The three women are just as proficient as the guys, and all the teams are cross cultural and male/female. Here’s what we’ve done in three days:

Setting up the sides on the Goodwin plans template. These guys were quite proud of themselves until they realized the boat was upsidown.

Ready, set: GO!

Julia and Marcus getting in the forward structure.

Isaac and Maria yesterday, flipping the fist boat to be ready to receive its bottom.

To add a bit of drama to the course, the solar car team, whose space we had taken over for these two weeks, returned early from the Solar Car Worlds in Australia. They needed their space now, with no dust. These are some tough sun bunnies; on their wall is a poster urging us to “Make the Sun Your Bitch”. Not sure what that actually means, but nonetheless, we made space, we cleaned it, and have been on our best behavior ever since.

Tomorrow is sailing day on Sabbatus for the class. We have four boats, thanks to the efforts of Chad Atkins, strapped to the roofs of two rental cars. We’ve bought long underwear, mittens and balaclavas for the equatorials, and are hoping beyond hope for enough breeze to get them a taste of what it is that makes us do the things we do.

Hope to see you there.

Oh, just had to share this courtyard where all kinds of cool things are made:

Relics of inspirations past…

Sabattus’ lovely ice is calling us back for Friday, even less wind forecast for Thursday than we had Wednesday, Friday forecast 6 mph at Lewiston airport. See below for pix from Thursday. Access is at town park on Lake St. Go through town and keep turning toward shore of SW edge of lake and turn right on Lake St. Weather Saturday looks sketchy with less wind and some chance of rain. Park said to get busy with ice fishermen on weekends.

We had about a dozen boats Wednesday, maybe with a bit more wind the scratch racing can be upwind/down wind as usual, it doesn’t take much on that smoooth ice.

Lloyd