Chickawaukie Ice Boat Club

Denis , Lee Spiller, Frank and I sailed a Grade 1 on Sebago a few years ago. Call it base line ice. When you have a grading system of one through ten, there needs to be a one, and that day was it. It was so rough and bouncy that the constant deflection of lee’s plank eventually zippered his hound right down the mast. I was well ahead by the time Lee’s mast went down and the thought of going back through that junk was daunting. Fortunately Denis and Frank are great at repairing nearly anything, so I just sat tight and waited.
The whole point of this digression is to allow us to argue over today’s rating. It came down to either a two or a three, so it’s getting a 2.5. We know it wasn’t a One because nothing broke. That appears to be a pre-requisite to be awarded a One. But let’s just say that if anyone sailing today had dentures, they’d be eating soup for dinner.
We did find a fairly clear lane for a fast run from the Narrows, where the wind shut off, all the way back down to the inlet creek. The two Whizz rounded up just at the bridge while their battered crew went to the Cafe for lunch. A downwind landing with a low bridge in the foreground is not for the faint of heart.

To add insult to injury, by the time we’d finished lingering over our lunch the ice had softened and the wind had died, trying to find its new position in the SW. We shoved through the slush back to the pits for slush runners, hoping for the predicted SW to fill in.

Bob MacEwan, Linc Davis and Dave Hoder had some good runs in spite of the conditions, Two young guys, Chris and Vlad from Portland showed up with an Iceabella design, from Sweden that Chris built around a windsurfer rig he had. It was their maiden voyage.

He built Cheapskate runners, made some good rig modifications, but by the time they showed up the ice was soft and the 1/8” Cheapie runners didn’t have a chance. They were mildly discouraged, to say the least, but a sympathetic sailor loaned them a set of slush runners and the boat just took off. Vlad characterized the feeling as “intoxicating”. Sounds like they are “in”.

Moral of the story is: never underestimate the value of slush runners, and no matter how poor the ice, a day on the lake with boats and buddies is never a bust!

Get out the snow shovels…

The surface is pretty good considering all the abuse it endured over the course of this snowy winter. There is 13” of ice, a couple of inches of which is currently slush. The temps tonight are due to drop into the mid to low twenties and that, combined with the refrigerator effect of all the cold mass below will probably firm it up. No promises, but a few sailors will show up and see.
Light wind in the morning, so no rush.

The access is excellent. The ground felt soft today but if it’s frozen in the moring we can drive on it. We don’t want to be leaving ruts.

On Schoodic Lake, the MDI guys will be sailing from Dan Clapp’s house tomorrow. Conditions sound similar. Check with Michael Young for details.

If the snow forecast for Friday night misses us we will leave boats on the ice. Otherwise, we are back to our day by day MO. Moosehead is wet out and needs to digest that snow before we can get our blades on it.

More than one person has asked about alignment techniques recently and if you look at who’s coming sailing these days, it is lots of new helmets and goggles.

Lloyd Roberts taught us all to use the dial indicator on a rod, but the triangles are a better way. Here’s a brief demonstration of how alignment triangles work.

This is just a demo set up. The plank is eliminated for clarity.
The boat is sitting on the plank, the runners are in the chocks, the bow is blocked up to the hight simulating the bow runner in place.
Each runner is placed on the fixture guides on top of its triangle., one per side, as shown above.

There is a scribe mark on the triangle indicating fore and aft location. Square down from the pivot bolt to this line. Be sure to set the bolt head so one facet is plumb, and register both runner bolts from the same side!
Load the boat with the skipper’s weight and check the string.

Looking closely at the photo above you’ll see a string that runs between the triangles. There is a scribe line that’s dead square to the fixtures in which the runners are set. In the photo above you can see that the string and the line are not together. This is mis-alignment and must be corrected with shims on the runner, or worse case, chock moved. But it must be done.

Here you can’t see the scribe because it is directly under the string. This is the result you want. It might take a few fittings and shimmings to get there, but the sailing experience will be well worth the effort.

Speaking of Sailing Experiance, the weather is looking good for Fri-Sat-Sun on Damariscotta depending on how the surface winds up at the end of tomorrow’s rain. There’s not much rain, and the lake needs no further wetting out, just a cold snap and it looks like Thursday night will do it. Not much wind until later on Friday.
We’ll have a look Thursday afternoon and report here. It will be a crap shoot for Friday anyway. It will be either Lake Farm or Vannah Rd.

Here is a great picture from the glory days on the Hudson demonstrating what happens when your runners are too tight in the chock and you go up in a hike.

They say runners should be just tight enough such that the front of the runner slowly drops under its own weight.
The folks standing on the plank are probably yelling back to the skipper, trying to warn him of the crack which is about to swallow the steering runner. Hopefully the yacht behind sees the crash and has time to change course.
Just another fun day on the ice.

Speaking of which, Friday is shaping up to be a good possibility at Damariscotta, and then again Tuesday-Wednesday next week.
Stand By!

Vannah Rd at Danmariscotta Lake has 16” near the ramp and a surface that will recover rough. but very sailable. The four inches of slush is firm, not too wet. A footprint barely registers.

It probably won’t be ready before the snow comes mid-week, but if it misses and the cold that’s predicted shows up, we might have something to write home about.

Up at Moosehead there is four feet of ice, as shown in a video going around of a guy drilling through. The top of the auger is at his chest, standing on the ice, and he is not a midget.

This is the surface close up which can be seen in the broad view from The Birches web cam. Looks almost sailable as is, but 4-6” of snow is threatening there as well mid week. Good news is rain comes the day after. And with so much ice we have some wiggle room. That huge thermal mass will go a long way in firming up the slush over nights just at the freezing mark. Kelly’s Landing is always hungry at this time of year and happy to have us!

Here’s a video from Dan Stillman from last week’s outing on Echo:

Sailing a Patch of Echo Lake 3/3/26 youtu.be

So, we’re no where near done.