Chickawaukie Ice Boat Club

Yesterday’s storm, one measured inch of rain followed by 10 hours of snow left3-4 inches of partially frozen slush
with blown snow drifts, only an inch or so at Lloyd’s Beach. This looked like sailable ice at drive by distance.
However boots on the ice and axe in hand reveal patches of now (zero degrees at 7 AM) dry shell ice, one inch
thick and an inch of air. The back of the axe goes through easily, “if the axe goes through you will too”. If that
isn’t discouraging enough there are wet slush pits under some drifts and an ice fisherman reports driving
through 8-9 inch drifts further down the lake. No sailing today, next thaw needed.

Two inches of snow reported from Sebago, ice visible 50/50 snow ice pattern. No boot report.

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Even though we had agreed yesterday to start earlier with hopes for cool temps and hard ice, it didn’t get below forty all night. Wind forecast was pretty good, so the fleet was rigged and heading for the race course in spite of the soft ice when yet another ATV trailer went through the ice. This time it took one of the marks and the starting blocks with it.

Nobody had checked the ice in the past twenty-four hours, and it soon became obvious that we’d lost six inches and the crystals had gone to pencil.

The series was called complete and boats began to de-rig. We were the last to leave the disaster scene, so were treated to a free ride home.

There was a small patch of black ice near the pits just large enough upon which to get wound up, so I sailed circles as the wind built hoping to tempt another boat to play but it was really time to go. Many of these crews had 36-48 hour drives ahead of them, and ferries to meet.

But not the German DN sailors. These guys are on iceboat safari. Every March they hit the road in search of ice, sail when the ice is “up” and chill on the beach when it’s not. They invited me to take one of their boats after we had been wind canceled. He had a tiny storm sail rigged and I went for miles.

These guys are retired, most been sailing for years. This is the furthest north they’ve had to travel; generally Poland or central Sweden have fine ice this time of year. We have our own ice gypsy, Ramblin Rodger from Maryland who mysteriously shows up every now and then. This year he started his season in Canyon Ferry, MT. Like Rodger, these guys live in their vans, cook both alone and communally, a make long tours in the morning, come back for lunch and a nap, and then do it again in the afternoon. One very nice detail I noticed, and it can be seen on the guy in the photo on the right, are rubber patches on the knees. How often are we kneeling on wet ice, or a bit of snow? Not sure I’d go for the tire patch red, but a section of inner tube might be just the right shape.

Lastly, my hosts and sponsors have been incredible. The Russians are really a Latin culture, with all the warmth, passion and approximate scheduling that we uptight Northerners find so exotic. They couldn’t have been more welcoming, helpful and supportive, along with all the other nationalities represented. My runners, for example, where sharpened and polished to an absolute mirror finish, no exaggeration. That’s hard work on our 1/4″ runners, but these were 1/2″! The amount of work to get them to that stage is brutal. I’m happy I could provide Igor with a good finish, if only so he feels his hard work has been put to good use.

And don’t forget to support my sponzor, Gazprom! All those stroriez you hear about them turning off the gaz to Ukraine? Yankee propaganda!

Igor, Gennady, Sasha (first place) and Igor’s son, George, at Igor’s boat, not really rushing to get off the ice: every iceboaters comfort zone.

So, boys, how’s Moosehead looking??!

We all know that the big elephant in the room of iceboating is that we like everything associated with the actual sailing and racing: building, repairing, scouting, connecting, traveling, and then, finally, maybe: sailing. We didn’t quite make it to that last item today. Eleven o’clock skippers meeting canceled due to 18-25kt. winds. Ditto at one, ditto at two. So we socialized, old sailing buddies became re-aquainted and talked old times, secrets were shared, and new contacts were made.I learned that the oldest boat in the fleet was built by the same guy who made that incredible movie on Monotype racing in the thirties. It’s on this site under videos. A wonderful connection to the past. And I met the Polish team, and Robert Slavinski, their chief. He has a grand hotel on a lake in Poland called Robert’s Port that sometimes host iceboating regattas. By all accounts a fabulous venue. He has three Monotypes and is a very good sailor. He managed a fourth in yesterday’s World Championship, edging out team CIBC at sixth place. (I’m burying this incredible statistic deep in the text not wanting it to go to my head, but believe me, that’s exactly where it’s gone: WOW!!!)

Between meetings and chit chat my Russian buddies and I went shopping, came back to a sunny spot out of the wind and enjoyed a terrific picnic lunch, watching the ice get darker and softer by the hour. It’s in the low forties here and the SW wind is not cold. Yesterday an ATV towing the trailer full of ballast back from the race pits (remember the long push home? The boats needed to be light) went into a slush pocket, was stopped, and a few seconds later went through in ten feet of water. Some of the sails were pulled out, but all the extra runners and ballast bags went to the bottom. This morning a diver was called and we hauled his gear to the site on a DN. He passed up all the hardware, separated the trailer from the ATV, and then led ropes around both. People were then able to haul the vehicles up, slide boards under, and slide them onto the ice.

We had our own landside gear failure: nail in the tire. But the Russians come prepared:

Tire Repair Kit. When Dima isn’t getting Gold Medals in sprinting, he drives a truck and has done this before. They even brought along a 12v compressor:

Between tomorrow and Friday we hope to get the European Champs in the books. Temps forecast to drop below freezing so we plan on an 11:00 start for the benefit of those without slush runners. The devotion to this class is incredible. Some of the guys will allow that bow steerers are just as fast if not faster, handle better, and are lighter but it’s just not what they sail. The happy result of this is that everyone sails the same boat and agrees to all the rules (most of the time). So if you want to race something that’s not a DN this is what you do. It would be the same as if everyone in New England that didn’t sail a DN sailed a Renegade or a Whizz. But we’re so individualistic, we Americans. Is iceboating outside DN’s suffering as a result? I believe we are holding our own, but wouldn’t it be nice if we could say to a new sailor that “this is what we sail so please build or buy one and join us”?
Anyway, it remains incumbent upon all of us who love this sport to relentlessly promote just to maintain the status quo. The kind of boat we actually sail is just the ice-ing on the cake.

Photos generally make ice look better that it actually is; here’s a rare example of the opposite.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014
2014 Maine State Championship! !!

After a late day wind on Saturday allowing the racers to complete the Doc Fellows
regatta we were hoping for the wind to be early and lasting. It was earlier and more moderate. We were able to finish 5 races. The final race was square at the start, but very soon after the start there was a wind shift to make things difficult.

The RC (me) lost all the registration papers, race results, clipboard, cash on the ice. Getting back to the launch site and finding that nobody had it, I went back out to look for it. Many of the cruisers joined in and helped, but we just could not find the grey clipboard. I will  replace the clipboard and it will most likely be a bright colored one. By the time I returned to the launch the racers were all on their drives home, so I could not reconstruct the  results. I packed up and decided I would email the three racers that I knew were in the top three places, and ask them for their separate recollections. I went home and did my best to remember the afternoon.

On Monday I emailed Steve, Chad, and Eric and asked them to email me what they could remember of the finishes. When I received the replies they all were the same, so we have
the results and the first three finishers of the 2014 Maine State Championship. I apologize to the remaining five sailors for not having their positions, but shit does happen.

Eric! 1+1+1+2=5
Chad! 2+3+1+1=7
Steve! 2+2+3+6=13

1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th Races

Race 1: Eric5193, Chad4487
Race 2: Eric5194, Steve4512, Chad4487
Race 3: Eric5195, Steve4512, Chad4487
Race 4: Chad4487, Eric5195, Steve4512
Race 5: Chad4487, Ed5022, Peter2766, Eric5195, Steve4512

Dave Fortier
US4690

Fairer winds verging on light greeted us at the pits this morning. The night was freezing so the ice was hard, and with the overcast skies it stayed that way. Many boats switched to slush runners, but the top boats were all on plates. We sailed the first race without ballast as the wind felt light, but it piped right up and it was all I could do to keep the darn thing on the ice. But we were favored by a lucky wind shift on the last lap and finished 8th out of 23 boats.
Everybody scrambled for their 50# bags of lead shot before the next start, but just a minute before the flag I felt the wind lighten a bit so dumped the lead and went. It was a drifter, but my crew Dimitri must be an Olympic sprinter because he kept us going in the lulls, and at a very key leeward mark rounding. We took 10th. Last race was just a fine sailing breeze and in spite of a lousy start clawed our way back up to 9th.
Don’t know yet where that places us in this World Championship, but I don’t think the CIBC should be feeling any shame. I do wish we had a club burgee to present to hosts for events like this…

The wind was too light for a fourth race; we had a late start due to some confusion over whether there was wind or not so time ran out. Don’t know why they start late at eleven; when is the first start at a DN regatta?
I just spent the morning before the race doing what we usually do: reaching around witnessing the miracle of flying on ice.

The white boat, Snow White, is sailed by a Swedish father/daughter team, while in the background is one of the heavily sponsored Russian boats. Is there some kind of irony here?

This class is healthy and growing. The Estonians have built four new boats this season, and organize at least a dozen local regattas a year. Two of the new boats are here, and the builders are in their late twenties. One of the guys told me that the girlfriends don’t mind that they go building iceboats on the nights and weekends instead of drinking. “They like we are doing something useful”. You heard it here: building iceboats is USEFUL!