Chickawaukie Ice Boat Club

My axe gave up chopping at 12″ on Megunticook today. The hole did not fill with water, even though the ice was not super hard. The surface is a nice uniform grey without any hazzards in view from my vantage point at the west end of the South Broads and could have been sailed today. I did test the waters on Chicky this morning, with Lloyd watching from the beach like a good parent of an errant child. By 10:00 it was forty degrees and small puddles were starting to form but the surface was still hard enough to handle the gusty NW wind with plates.

I sailed nine laps of an imaginary course, then realized how much fun it would be to actually have TWO boats, so I called Brian Lamb after checking Megunticook and he’s game for a bit of sailing tomorrow. We plan to be setting up by 8:00 in Bailey Cove. It’s plank access only in there, but I have not checked Bog Bridge for access.

Meanwhile, things are looking good for racing in New Brunswick this weekend. This from Warren Nethercote:

Bob Crinion reports hints of good ice emerging from beneath the snow on Mactaquac (Fredericton). So there is a possibility of some spring sailing this weekend, albeit constrained by family Easter commitments. If ice conditions are confirmed we will follow up with another message.

I will give an update tomorrow afternoon and possibly Friday morning, and am hoping that today’s rain followed by the forecast cold weather will give us some sailable ice.

This wonderful painting that Ben Fuller sent in of sailing on Alamoosook Lake in Orland, ME, reminds us that we are not done yet. Nearly all the snow has wet out on Chicky and Megunticook exposing hard ice. It’s much more solid than what Jory and I sailed on at Damariscotta two weeks ago. So if we get a cold morning in the next few days we’ll be sailing.

As a matter of fact, this lake looks rather interesting. Anybody out there ever sailed it or know anything about it? Is there a spy nearby?

Stand by; don’t pack away the boat, yet.

NOAA Weather has real time doppler radar displays showing precipitation of passing weather events with color coding indicating intensity of rain/snow fall. I tracked Tuesday’s storm that dumped 10 inches of snow on us at the coast blotting out Damariscotta and Chikcawaukie, likely for the season.

The blue storm on radar with a central green yellow heavy snow core came up the coat and centered the mid coast but it seemed to just graze Millinocket and the lakes that Bill, Jory, and others sailed on over the weekend with luscious miles of ice.

By Thursday with these images still in mind and not having heard from our intrepid wanderers I wondered if they had snuck off North to beyond the edge of the snow for end of season ecstasy. I called Buchholz and was surprised to find him home. I told him about the edge of the storm radar, was there a chance of spared ice? He allowed that he would check the webcam at the spiffy B&B that looks out over the lake at sunup. We got a little worked up over the prospect.

The next morning I called him as he was dialing up the lake image and I was aleready mentally grunting the boat up onto the truck. Gray or white Bill? White, with snowmobile tracks.

It seems that Millinocket is as far as the radar beam gets from Portland and in fact there was eight inches of snow in Quebec. Apparently NOAA’s taxpayers’ funded wonder beam does not go any further because there are no more taxpayers beyond Millinocket.

Write your congressman.

Iceman

Ahh, the good old days. You know you are approaching old fartdom when you find yourself saying that very often! But really, what I am referring to is when I first discovered the DN. When I started sailing on ice, it was all about racing, and that was a good thing. It caused togetherness, competition, and fun. I must also add that racing did very much for advancing the performance of iceboats in general. Runner alignment, and sharpening, for one, and bendy masts for the other.

Well the cruisers found the ice on Damariscotta, so thanks, men. When I got there on Friday the cruisers were packing up and heading north to some new ice a couple of hours away in Millinockett! Meanwhile, I made phone calls confirming the ice report, solid/bumpy ice. I then made a wonderful discovery of my own, Damariscotta Lake Farm, Bed and Breakfast/Restaurant and Bar, great place, and directly across the road from the launch site! How many years have I been sailing here and not at the least visited the bar!

Damariscotta Lake Farm Restaurant and B&B (Jefferson, Maine) – B&B Reviews – TripAdvisor

Everyone arrived good and early as iceboaters should, and there was wind. Bob Crinion arrived from Nova Scotia after an all night solo 8 hour drive, making the Maine State Championships an international event. Sailors from as far south as New York and Maryland as well. NW winds blowing across the lake were a bit gusty/shifty and were backing to the west as the day went on. I am happy that Doug Raymond came to race, good to have at least two Mainers in the MSC. The boys from southern NE came with their speed, so the race was on. I was not up front so I can’t personally describe the action, but I do know that I suggested that we use the Bart rule! The BUMPY ice gave the leader T some problems with runner chock bolts loosening, but that was not enough to slow him down. It was funny to read what he put on the NEIYA site: “The ice was re-frozen snow or something and the ride was BUMPY but that is part of the game, isn’t it? If you didn’t lose any parts from you boat or fillings from your teeth you are set for awhile….” also from the winner: “Very physical sailing with puffs and lulls coming and going very abruptly- Big changes in direction also meant big sheet adjustments all day and lots of throwing weight around in the boat. And plenty of positions gained and lost!

Thanks to everyone who made it- Especially Bob Crinion who made the trip from Nova Scotia to sail with us and Kristin Buckley for keeping score also the generous folks who kindly let us use the launch site.

C. Dave Fortier

RESULTS:

James “T” Thieler US 5224 1 1 1 1 (1) 4

Greg Cornelius US 1019 3 2 (3) 2 2 9

Bob Crinion KC 4536 4 3 2 3 (4) 12

Steve Madden US 4512 2 4 4 (5) 3 13

Doug Raymond US 4272 5 (6) 5 4 5 19

Dave Fortier US 4690 (DNF) 7 6 6 8 27

Dave Buckley US 4500 6 8 (8) 7 7 28

Richard Gluckman US 4334 7 (DNS) 7 8 6 28

Rick Bishop US 916 (DNF) DNS DNS DNS 5 32

Took a walk on Chicawaukee Friday Mar 22, (where I have been XC skiing).

The open water and honey combed ice at my beach is now 5-6 inches of soft snow ice, no plank needed. 100Yards out under 6 inches of soggy snow, but not slush, there is dark dry black ice. I chopped and chopped this clear fairly hard ice and finally broke through still solid ice at 10 inches!! Where did the 2-3 inches of junky wet stuff on the top and the leaky junky stuff under that all go? No water welled up into the hole while chopping as it did about ten days ago when rain water just disappeared from the surface. This pretty good looking black ice contained no visible air and indeed after breaching the bottom the hole promptly filled with clear, not brown run off, water and overflowed onto the ice spreading out into the snow. Why hasn’t all the ice sunk and wetted out the snow? It seems to have sealed itself in the last week of cold weather and now it does not have buoyancy enough to hold up the snow.
If it is still 10 inches thick it is not rotting out from underneath. How cold is the water? I trudged back to the house for my precision measuring device, a red fluid Taylor out door thermometer taped to the blade of a hockey stick. The water at the base of the ice seemed to be 32 F, at the depth of the hockey stick (junior size, about 4 ft) it seemed slightly warmer, about 33 F. This is probably floating on slightly denser 40 F water further down. The stream flowing into the lake at my beach was ice covered so I could not get its temperature, likely 32 F as it is mostly snow ice covered with very slow flow right now.
All we need is a couple of inches of rain and another few days of cold weather for Easter sailing.

Iceman