Chickawaukie Ice Boat Club

Bob Lombardo and his fellow skater Carl skated Pushaw Lake on Sunday and are there again today…Bob reports that the lake is fully frozen with 3” of slush ice giving a fairly good surface. Tonight’s deep freeze of single-digit temperatures should make it safe for careful iceboating on Tuesday. This lake has such good memories from last season.

Our Plymouth Pond spy, Lorrie Nichols, reports that the pond is fully frozen, is walkable, and has a thin snow cover.

For black ice, Pemaquid Pond is smoothly and newly frozen, and may be usable for Wednesday sailing. I will be checking thickness there Tuesday morning, and will try to post a report in the evening.

Bill Buchholz is down at MIT in Cambridge, Mass. teaching iceboat construction, so we’re a bit on our own here in Midcoast Maine….I know that if Bill were here, at this very moment we’d be driving to Pushaw to check it out for tomorrow, possibly spending the night there….Tomorrow’s forecast is an iceboater’s dream: sun and hatfuls of wind!

Be Safe!…..jory

Bad news from Plymouth today: it froze before the last snow storm and now is covered in white. With dropping temps throughout the coming week it will not recover. But the cold may begin to work on other local lakes. Bog Bridge on Lake Megunticook has three inches of frozen slush upon which Jory Squibb skated today. Unity Pond was 80% frozen this morning with about an inch, but strong north winds reduced that to less than half. The good news is that the frozen half of the pond is the south end, where the boat launch ramp is. The winds are abating this evening and temps will be in the single digits tonight and tomorrow night. Unity Pond appears to be the best bet so far. We’ll let you know how it shapes up in the next couple of days.

Meanwhile, back in the shop, we’ve been mentoring a high school junior with an iceboat project. His school gives the kids a full week between semesters in which to engage with a mentor and work at least forty hours on a project of their choice. We’ve been building the Mini-Skeeter, designed by John Eisenlore.

Free standing mast, 7′ plank, no springboard, strip plank deck, ten feet long. Old hardware from Tom Nichols and Cody Sisson are in there somewhere. Super comfortable recumbent seating position. Warren, the builder, is committed to having her on the ice this winter. He’s even skipped a number of ski team practices to work on his boat: priorities in order!

Steering is single rod to the bow chock, massive mast step and mast partners to carry the free standing mast, adjustable foot pedal locations for different sailors.

Think Ice, Hard.

Cold weather forecast into single numbers next week for 3-4 days very promising, only one month late.

hat’s off to the icehounds
the ones who don’t sleep
who find scraps of fun
as the rest of us weep

while mates snore like sawmills
in the hour before dawn
their ice-intuition
is fully turned on

they crawl to the screen
scan temperatures, wind
and their internal roll-a-dex
twirls once again:

now the ice on Pond X
was an inch at day’s end
it’s 22 now and
a good sailing wind

is it worth it: the drive?
the hustling of gear?
when there’s still cards to write
and a cup of good cheer?

but the real hounds don’t stumble
don’t pause, don’t abort
their wiring is different:
they know life is short

and when they meet the Great Sailor
on that Plate at the last
he’ll question them closely
on their keenness in past

as the Great Gates creak open,
they’ll haul sheets with ease
then sail off forever
on the heavenly breeze!

While we were were being good boys and staying close to home over Christmas, Denis Guertin took his family to the ice and managed to snatch another fantastic bit of sailing from Lac Joli. Since last week when the Yankees were there they have had snow, rain, and everything in between. Yet from all that chaos came this lovely sheet of orange peel. There were a few holes where the slush pits had formed, but the ice was still over three inches.

It’s snowing in Quebec and inland Maine today; we’re getting rain and freezing rain here on the coast. The coming week will be tossing us our own mixed bag of wintery wetness and all we can do at this point is to hope that somehow Plymouth Pond pops out at the other end with something satisfying for us starving sailors.

The old stern steerer “Whirlwind” is all decked out with a new high aspect ratio sail, all the rigging sorted out, and sharpened and aligned runners. They were only out .060, which for a boat nearly 100 years old is pretty amazing. We have seen nothing but high quality first class construction and materials every where we looked. All we need now is that elusive hard frozen stuff and a buyer for the boat.

She is for sale for a serious buyer. Contact Lloyd or myself for details. On the trailer ready to go. More photos available.