While we’re testing the limits of our patience, push play, close your eyes, and listen to this wonderful musing on black ice. The visuals will keep you going a little bit longer. Some of you Cape sailors may even recognize the lake.
We are building a fine foundation for Spring. Right now a coarse orange peel surface of crusted snow from the storm a couple of days ago which was snow and then rain. The rain caused the dimpled orange peel which would be an impossibly rough surface if it saturated and froze. Now it is 2-3 inches of slush and about the same of snow. The good side of this mess is that snowmobiles don’t do slush, it freezes and gums up their belts, it is even hard walking and crust is no fun skiing.
All of this is likely to be buried this evening under forecast 6-10 inches more of snow, possibly drifting in 40 mph winds. It will all get rained down and frozen up for March we hope.
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Our 8 inches of snow had a nice smooth surface just waiting for a wet down rain cure but it has gotten a snowmobile treatment instead and has changed from a trackless wasteland to a wasted trackland. We need a tropical storm. Nice XC skiing though.
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The recent snowfall has left us scouring around for possible ice. Tom Childs reports that part of Sebago was open during the snowstorm, but if that open water now freezes, it will be surrounded by snow-covered thin ice. He wisely suggests waiting until everything thickens. All of our other New England favorites are snowed out, as far as we can tell.
But….we have a nice report from Tom Nichols in New Jersey. They will be sailing this weekend on the Navasink River, in Red Bank, NJ–using the clubhouse of the North Shrewsbury Ice Boat and Yacht Club. There may be even better ice nearby on Barnegat Bay from the public beach at Lavallette, NJ.
Tom Nichols gave me a little of the physics of sailing on salt ice, which both the Navasink and Barnegat Bay give us. Salt ice freezes about 28 degrees, and therefore slushes out at about 30 and above. It is noticeably slower ice to sail on, but it forms a level platform for subsequent rain and snow to build fresh-water ice upon. Once the fresh water coating is 1/2 ” thick or more, sailing becomes lake sailing, which is what exists in New Jersey in the unusually cold year.
So…Bill and I are standing by, considering a Saturday-Tuesday drive down there because, even if the boating isn’t spectacular with wind prediction is 5-10 Sunday and 10-15 Monday; still, we get to connect to a wonderful iceboat community and to our own iceboat lineage. We’re gritting our teeth: The drive is daunting, especially with a trailer. We’d be going beyond NYC. But, as with all ‘chercher la glace’ trips, there is the perennial excitement of gambling.
An update may follow on Saturday
We have four new Whizz under construction, one hoping to hit the ice this season and the others next year. With W-1 Whizz Kid dominating the C Skeeter class this year it only seems fitting that from this evolving fleet of now eleven boats can be found a worthy competitor.
Carl Jelleme is building his W-9 on Nantucket.
This is a good shot of the kerfs in the stringers that allow you to pull them in and down (and the chines up). Note also the nice radius on the chine in the cockpit. It’s nice to have a soft corner to bump into a you’re bouncing around on rough ice, like today on Damariscotta for example. W-3 Whizzard bottomed out of a pile of frozen stuff today and put a crack in the bottom.
Meanwhile in Quebec, Denis is building W-10 for himself, to be christened Whizzper, and W-11 Whizzkey for his buddy Francois.
Bill Bernhard lives in Adirondack, NY and sails a Nite from his front yard on Schroon Lake. If all goes according to plan he should have W-8 sailing before the end of the season.
As we all know by now, Paul Zucco launched his W-7 earlier this season and reports that he went as fast an he wanted for the first time out, if not faster. Steve Lamb is working to complete W-6, but he appropriated its wing mast for the Renegade El Diablo. She sailed beautifully, Steve reports. Frank Able has yet to find time to launch W-5 Gee Whizz but is just itching to go.
Can we muster this group to a start line some day? The ISA regatta has been called ON for this weekend on Champlain at Westport, NY, assuming the snow doesn’t nail the plate on Wednesday. Could we see more than one Whizz on the line? Paul? Pete? Rodger? Frank?
