Chickawaukie Ice Boat Club

The south end, which was 4” of new black ice before the recent rain, is now down to three. It’s still hard, no rot. The north end, which is the older plate and much thicker, was covered in snow. It has been reported to be wet out (or close to it: intel unclear). There are cracks, pressure ridges and unknown hazards.

This is the bay around the corner and a bit south from Goulds Landing. That’s Dollar Island in the middle distance.

Then there’s some of this stuff, too.

Anyone up for careful scouting, slow sailing and paying attention, welcome to Pushaw! Strong winds forecast!

9:00 at Goulds Landing.

Our web cam at Damariscotta Lake has been a little problematic, but Ryan Haskell went out there and set it right. He also opened a youtube channel for CIBC where the time lapse video for each day is available.

Web cam at: http://www.mile213.com/damar.jpg

And the daily videos are collected here:

https://www.youtube.com/@chickawaukieiceboatclub7825/videos

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Another long shot, but the strong coastal SE wind might just penetrate far enough inland to take the still off Lake St. George. Looks like there is a window with a nice breeze before the rain/snow sets in. The plate is small, just the boat launch bay, but the wind will be on it directly up and down. A mark at each end will make it interesting and fun, and good training.

Sometime between noon and sundown, but check your forecast before making the call yourself.

About alignment. We all know how critical this is to successful sailing. I just performed four alignments on three different boats: a stern steerer, a super DN, and two sets of runners on a DN. Conventional wisdom has it that you set up the boat on the floor, put the runners on the triangles, set yourself in the boat with thirty pounds and observe for corrections.

Or, if it’s a nice day, do it on the ice. But good luck trying to get shim tape to stick when it’s cold.

Not being a floor person I decided to try it on the table, sans boat, plank initially not deflected. Everything is at a nice working hight. The plank is secured such that when you do sit on it with fifty pounds in your pocket the plank is level. The runners are shimmed until you get perfect alignment, checking each time by climbing onto the plank and bouncing on it.

I checked every alignment later on the boat on the floor in the conventional manner and there wasn’tt a change in any of them: perfect across the board. So if your back and knees aren’t what they used to be, here’s a nice alternative.

And that ice in the photo above? That’s boat launch bay, Lake St. George.

Acting on a tip from a skater Facebook page which told of a half inch of new ice on Lake St. George, we chose to skip the trip Downeast to Mopang and take a long shot on local ice. Looking from a rise along the road it appeared that there was part of the lake under old snow, and then quite a bit of new ice. There was a find dust of fresh snow, but the plate turned out to be absolutely heavenly. Two and a quarter inches of something not quite black ice, but softer and dead flat. Black ice has large crystal facets that return a satisfying clickity-clack, satisfying probably because you know you’re on black ice.

The bay at the boat launch ramp was part of the new plate. Access to the rest of the lake was blocked by snow, but with the wind blowing up and down the bay gave us some fine sailing.. There are a few large holes along the far side of the bay.

Sadly, there is no more wind in the forecast before big rain moves in later in the week. The lake could certainly be scouted and toured on skates. The quality of the surface is extraordinary.

Back at the shop Ben Fuller set of his new stern steerer STREAK for the first time. Everything looks great and ready to go, so look forward to seeing Ben out there soon sporting the finest of nineteenth century iceboating clothes.

There are two more of this class in Massachusetts; all three plan to put on a good show at the NEIYA Vintage Returns.

With challenging conditions, the regatta was pulled off with four Gold fleet races and three Silvers. Here are the results:

https://iceresults.org/1dn/2023westernregional.htm

Congratulations to regatta first timers and CIBC members Paul Chamberland and Jeff Roseberry for outstanding sailing!