Chickawaukie Ice Boat Club

No, not our beloved ice-making weather system, but the buzz of first ice with good buddies. Rules of Thumb say not to drive excessive distance to ice that hasn’t been sailed, but there is also the “show up and pray” clause. Invoking the latter, based on the bubbly optimism of Denis Guertin I headed for Quebec long before dawn yesterday. He wasn’t sure where we’d be sailing but he promised ice somewhere. As we’ve been feeling the pinch of a late starting season it seemed to be a worthwhile gamble. Besides, the NEIYA racing gang had driven all the way to Wisconsin this weekend; my little jaunt across the border paled by comparison.

I found Denis and Frank on Petit Lac Lambton in an easy four and a half hours, including a search at the border. The Canadians did not believe one could be ice boating so early in the year so must have felt I was hiding something under all those sails and planks.
The guys were setting up in a hatful of wind with streamers of snow decorating the plate. Frank, who can never get enough wind, was thrilled and bent on full sail. My little Davis venturii anemometer pegged a steady twenty with gusts to twenty-five, so it was storm sail for me. The lake is one mile by a half with the wind coming right down the middle, so the logical thing to do was to set up marks and race. In these conditions racing is actually safer than just sailing around.

These guys had never raced before, so I shouted the basics and off we went. Halfway through the second race the wind snapped the 1″ dowel holding the flag at the leeward mark, so we just followed the old skid marks to finish out the race. The little storm sail was just the ticket and won five out of five. We were knackered out by late afternoon, so put the boats to bed and retired to Denis’s summer cabin a few miles away on a different lake for lies and libations.

Today dawned clear, 16 F, with a light breeze rippling the surface of Grand Lac St. Francois, a big lake visible from Denis’s place which will freeze later. By the time we’d packed the calories and slipped in the hand warmers the wind was up to a nice 10-15. Back on the race course today, it was Frank who dominated with Scott Carlson’s old boat. We could catch him with tactics, but for pointing and boatspeed he had the package de jour.

Not much worth reporting in Maine yet, except for this little beauty on Rt. 27 between Stratton and the Canadian border called Lower Lake. The wind was blowing right down the middle and I chopped a few holes indicating five inches. If I wasn’t so beat up from two days in a DN I would have been tempted, but there is that “never sail alone” rule with no caveats or addendum so I present this hidden treasure for all of you. Get it before the snow does:

There’s a lot more of the lake than you see here, with islands and wandering straights. It doesn’t appear to be part of a river system so might not have flow, but it looks deep. Oddly enough, nearby Natanis Pond which appeared to be much shallower only had two inches. Ah, the mysteries of ice.

We’ll be scouting this week and will post it here, as always. Welcome to the 2014 Season!

I’ve had it: Just as we get ice,
the temperature climbs and climbs!
My ice axe tinkles paltry ice,
though best of all my finds
But I know that there’s an answer,
and we’re off to Thetford Mines.

You say you’ve never heard of,
that place called Thetford Mines?
Just point your car’s nose northward,
and start following the signs
And four and a half hours later,
you’ll spot the lake at Thetford Mines

I thought Maine was just as nifty,
as any iceman finds
‘Til the smokestacks of Republicans
blew heat from southern climes
And now my heart is yearning
for the ice of Thetford Mines

Thetford has a secret,
while our southern heart repines:
When winds blast from Alberta,
and the mercury declines,
The locals smile and cavort about,
on the lakes of Thetford Mines.

I’ll find a sassy French girl,
who dresses to the nines
Who cooks a wicked bouillabaisse
with a broth of lemon rinds
In her cottage on the ice-edge
in little Thetford Mines

So we’ll leave you ice-nuts languishing
in endless weather binds
Bill and I’ll come limping back
when summer’s on our minds
To bathe and tell you fables
of the ice at Thetford Mines

My basic expectation of any ice season is to be on Plymouth Pond on December 8. And on average, that is usually about right. So today, I was settling into a lovely afternoon nap when the phone rang. It was our wonderful new Plymouth spy, Tim Smith, who had just chopped a 4″ hole thru solid ice at the landing. I immediately called Bill.

Jory: I have crushing news! Do you have a handkerchief handy?

Bill: Wait! let me sit down a minute! Death in the family?

Jory: We missed Plymouth Pond! 4″ of black ice!

Then recriminations flew back and forth about exactly whose fault it was, until, with a sigh, it became clear that we were equally asleep at the switch. 1:40 PM….what to do? Get the hell up there! So we sped up north at high speed, telling Plymouth Pond stories and eagerly looking for the landmarks…..dixmont, home stretch….the water tower, one more hill….and there it was, grey in the afternoon sun. Driving by, it looked like Moby Dick’s old whale hide: drain holes, orange peel surface, sticks and stones. I half expected a harpoon to be lodged at an angle.

But Tim was right–a solid 4″–so we strapped on skates, Bill assembled his Skimbat, and we started swinging our ice axes, as we made our way out into deeper water.   Hooray!  After weeks of piddling ice,  something was solidly talking back to our swings!  Soon we came to smoother ice, without orange peel,  which measured noticeably less than 4″:   2.5″!   Bill abandoned the skimbat, as our worries increased, and I headed back to the pits for a forgotten pair of claws.  This was not going to be bullet-proof ice!

Once we were back together again–Bill not having moved an inch in my absence– we espied two areas about 2′ in diameter, just faintly different from their surroundings,  which turned out to be only 3/4″ thick! We made a note to mark them later, and–still gripped by ‘early ice extasy’– continued on the 2.5″ ice to the South. We soon found that the ice was far from monolithic:  it was a potpurri of textures, overlapping plates, and brash ice sandwiches; which occasionally measured as little as 1.5″ thick. It was almost impossible, in this variety of surfaces, to spot the ice junctions which are so vital to see and check.   Then,  a moment of  total panic set in:       It suddenly  seemed like we were surrounded on all sides by dangerous, unknown, unpredictable ice.  A high-stakes roulette game with nasty odds.    We gingerly turned around and, inspecting the glassy black ice carefully,  exactly followed our skate scratches back to the launch area, where we skated and skimbatted safely  in the light air, keeping to the 2 acre patch of 4″ thick orange peel ice.

As the sun set, we packed up and headed south, thanking our stars that we had not, after all, missed Plymouth. Plymouth at this stage is a disaster ready to happen.   There was no pre-season free lunch.   But she’ll probably be waiting for us, after this next warm spell, with the better kind of adventure we so long for.

i have to admit: i love checking ice. what a great way to blow a morning, when, in all probability, there’s nothing happening. Just sitting on the edge of grassy pond, looking out on a whole pond with 1″ of newly-minted ice. Can’t i invent some machine with long, triple runners, a weed-wacker engine and spiked drive-wheel to blast across this virginity?

for the locals, here’s what i saw:

howe hill swamp: old ice=1.3″ new ice =.75 (estimate since i couldn’t cross the old ice) hobbs pond, near fish pond connector: =1.2″ lovely ice
whitetail reflecting pools: shaded ice=2″ (could be skated) open ice =1″ toleman pond: =1.7 (could be skated by midgets with 3′ nordic skates) grassy pond: =1″ very nice ice about to be kyboshed by warm dastardly weather megunticook, bog bay: old ice =2″ could be skated) open ice=.8′ megunticook lake main body= open water
plymouth pond, as reported by your pie-in-the-sky plymouth store: open water

so, shall i go out in the weak yellow 1PM sun and skate those paltry slivers of ice? or, loaded with thanksgiving leftovers, drift off into la-la land. you guessed it…..ZZZZZZ

EARLIEST USEABLE ICE

A few cold nights and frozen puddles and we are digging out our skates and sharpening runners. When will it actually freeze enough to skate/sail on?
The easiest clue is to listen to NOAA radio. The key is “mean daily temperature” strangely enough this needs to be 32F or below. In order for big enough ice to use to freeze these cold nights we need to have little or no wind… forecast “light and variable”.
Some 50 years ago when my high school hockey team played on natural outdoor ice (talk about “hardship of the old days”) I was the team manager and responsible for the ice. The main duty was flooding the rink at night for fresh ice the next day, my middle name was Zamboni. We only flooded when the temperature was below 20F. In reality for useful new ice to form or “skim over” the temperature needs to be nearer 10 than 20. If it has been cold snap “Canadian High” cold for a day or two it has likely been NW windy as well with the front coming in. About the third day of the high we can expect the “light and variable” wind to allow skim it all over seize up as the surface water has been cooled and maybe supercooled to 32 or below by the wind and cold air. When the daytime temp is less than 10 and no wind expect real action. I have seen Chickawaukee freeze right over in the middle of the day, you could see the ice grow. Then you can get 1/2-3/4 inch overnight growth and the real stuff. Beaver ponds and frog puddles will jump the gun and Jory will find them.

Right now, Black Friday after T’giving, two cold nights and daytime 30’s may have the beavers holding their breath but so might we.

Iceman