Hard Water Sailing

Regular readers of this blog know that I have some friends that love fast sailboats. No surprise then that many of these same friends own iceboats, namely the DN class iceboat . Iceboat owners living in the Mid-Atlantic are a patient lot. With our moderate winters, an iceboat doesn't see the light of day very often; years can go by with the iceboat tucked away in the garage. This winter was an unusually cold one for December and January, so it wasn't unexpected when I got a phone call from Bill Beaver at the beginning of February; "there's thick ice up on the Pennsylvania lakes, want to go up with me on Friday and do some DN sailing?" I've done this a couple of times in the past. I usually take my ice skates along and then cop a ride on a DN whenever someone wants to take a breather. Memories of great fun and so it transpired that at "0-dark-thirty" (a favorite Bill Beaver expression) I was riding shotgun in Bill's Volvo, heading north around the Baltimore Beltway toward the Pennsylvania border.

Bill had one more surprise for me.... somewhere between my last DN outing (5 years ago? maybe 6?), Bill had acquired a second DN.... I was going to have a DN all to myself!

Blue Marsh Lake outside of Reading Pennsylvania was our destination. Three other iceboat nuts showed up; former International Canoe competitor and long time friend, Roger Link from just south of Annapolis, Chris Price (forward hand on the very successful Price brother team during my International 14 days), and Jim Irwin from Riverton YC, Philadelphia. Wind was calm until about 11 am, then filled in from the south, but very streaky. We did get gusts around 10 knots, but also some calms and a big zonal shift; more westerly over on the western finger of the lake, more southerly at the southern shore.

This didn't matter to me. I'm all into joy riding these speedsters. Laying flat, head propped up with the ear next to the boom, going about 30 mph in the gusts, bouncing, chattering, ice chips pelting the face.... what a hoot. Unlike anything you will ever experience.

Roger and Bill, coming from techie soft water one-designs, are now trying to upgrade their equipment. Racing these beasts entails a whole different mindset in tuning; runner shape/sharpening; very flexible masts, pusher starts and then a graceful entry into the cockpit; not hitting anyone at 40 mph.

For me; I'm just happy to be a permanent newbie in this very exciting sport. Bill, pencil me in when we get another cold winter (2014? 2015?).

Far off shot of three DN's on Blue Marsh Lake.........



Chris Price rigging his DN on the right, one of Bill Beaver's DN's on the left....



And here's a recent YouTube with an video camera onboard a DN.