Chickawaukie Ice Boat Club

Jory Squibb’s favorite little swamp came in nice today with close to two inches. A small group skated and skate sailed under clear skies and warm temps.

Bob Lombardo skated Plymouth pond and found nearly three inches of nice Black Ice. Probably coulda been sailed. My excuse is that my DN is halfway to Minnesota as we speak, bound for the Western Challenge this coming weekend. Commodore Stanton and your reporter will fly out tomorrow and meet T, Karen and Eric Anderson and our boats on Lake Christina. It looks about like this:

Plymouth may survive, so please keep a close watch. There may be a sailing day or two tucked in between weather. This scout will be back next week.

I visited again, around 1:30 pm today. The ice near the shore is now more like 1.25 inch thick. I didn’t walk out more than a few feet (since I left my swim suit at home), but there was a guy there who had put out a few ice fishing traps. He said that 15 or 20 feet out (as far as he went), the ice was about 2.5 inches thick.

There were also numerous incipient pressure ridges.

In big boat racing news, all Skeeters that sail in ISA events have the letter designations of their club on the sails. If the file below will open, all the clubs in the USA and their letters are there.

ISA Sail Letters.xlsx

New member Jack Wright just bought the old Ray Ruge A Skeeter from David Jones and wants to make it official, with his own number. The CIBC Board has decided to register with the ISA and the next question was: with what letters? The NIEYA recently got NE as they have two C Skeeters which might go to the ISA someday (Fred, George…?) Tom Nichols suggested we use the letters form the now defunct Lake Wallenpaupack Club, of which he was a member. (then he gets to keep his letters!) The letters are XX.

What this would do for the club is to give it voting rights at ISA meetings, so even if just one of us goes there, the East will have a voice. As far as I know, there are no more Eastern Skeeters going to ISA regattas. As most of you know I’ve long been trying to get a flock of Whizz to go out there and put on a show. If that were to actually happen, at least we’d more official than the ragtag gang we really are!

Randall Fairman had a look today and found this. Looks like maybe next week.

I visited Plymouth Pond around 1 pm today. Near the shore the ice was almost an inch thick, with a dusting of snow on top — 1/4 inch or less. The snow was about as dry as it could be given the ambient temperature of 28 or 30 degrees. Further out, I could see that in places where there’s an upwelling of water (or something), there are places with no snow. These might actually be open water or very thin ice — hard to tell from a distance. There are maybe a dozen such places visible from the road.

Here’s a nice short and concise guide to all the basics courtesy of the Nite class.

Nite Tuning Guide

All of it applies to all of us, but Newbies will find the upwind and downwind descriptions vital.

Tolman Pond, on Rt. 90 in Rockport, has long been considered a good proxy for Plymouth, an hour to the north. Today Toleman was nearly locked in with a half inch of black ice.

This bodes well for Plymouth Pond, which will be checked tomorrow. We’ll update here.

Michael Young brings up a good point. Both he and Larry Mazoway hit fisherman’s pop-ups last season. It turns out the price has gone up. The going rate to keep the fishermen happy is $40.oo. Keep a pair of twenties on board just in case. Better yet, give them a wide berth.