iceboating.net Minnesota Ice Sailing Association

More to follow as I can get them uploaded.

I was going over my boat looking for some spike-marks to fill and I found that one of the sideboards had started to split! Some unexpected quality time in the shop this week...

Probably that rough ice last Friday.

Cheers,

Geoff S.
US-5156

Here are a few quotes about the GC regatta published in the various Madison media last week (names removed to protect the misquoted):

"When I was 16, I raced everything I could, motorcycles, cars. But as I grew older I discovered those were just things I did until I discovered iceboating. This is a blast."

"You can't be picky, this is probably one of the nicest pieces of ice in the country right now."

"This is probably the last place in the world to iceboat today."

"We've been here nine days and this is the first day of the regatta. It is sometimes very frustrating to wait on the ice."

At the swap meet here this fall, Paul Goodwin remarked that one downside of the water-soluble "Blue Juice" cutting fluid is that it will freeze. I stored that little factoid away in my mind, and decided I'd keep my WD-40 soaked stones in the "on the ice" toolkit, and the blue-juice ones in the shop.

Well, the best laid plans, etc. I loaded up the car with spare parts and extra tools for the Western Challenge regatta and took my stoning bench and shop-stones with me. They went into the hotel room for post-race runner-tuning, and all was good. I got home late Sunday night and postponed cleaning out the car for a couple of days... Guess what happened!

Ever since I got burned at the NAs last year by aligning my runners with an out of whack set of aligners, I've been thinking about how to align my chocks without relying on a "gold standard" fixture. Optically seems to be the only way to go to align things from "first principles".

Iceboating.net:
    http://www.iceboating.net
(of course!)

Iceboat.org - 4 Lakes Ice Yacht Club:
    http://www.iceboat.org

DN Bulletin Board:
    http://cerebus.winsite.com/laser/DNboard/DNmain.html

Yahoo! Iceboating Group:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IceBoating/

MSN Landsailer and Iceboat Design and Construction Group:
    http://groups.msn.com/LandsailerandIceboatdesignandconstruction

Tom Speer's Home-Page:
    http://www.tspeer.com/

While I love my DN, here in the 4-Lakes club the Renegade is king (there are typically more than 20 boats on the line for a club race). So, last summer I bought a "fixer upper" Renegade. The original hope was to have it ready for the 03-04 season, but my day-job and other stuff happened and it's still sitting Jim Nordahus' shop as a work-in-progress. I'll try and keep a running commentary on the work as the boat progresses to sailable condition.

I raced in the DN North American Regatta for the first time this year. I thought I'd share the experience. Originally, this was a in a combination of forward and reverse time-sequence; I edited the pieces into chronological order.

For some more of my ramblings (and a few photos), check the web page created by Debbie Whitehorse (the 4-Lakes Ice Yacht Club's webmaster) from e-mailed reports and photos during the regatta:

http://iceboat.org/images/03-04/dnna/dnna.htm

(Thanks Debbie!)

9:30pm Saturday.

This is proabably the last posting. Hope you all had a great time!

The trend for Sundy is pretty solid: wind building. The question is: when will it start? Most predicitons seem to favor an overnight increase into the teens, although that could happen later depending on how fast the front moves in. Temps should break 10F before 9am and rise to near 20 in the afternoon. Winds from the east or SE starting somewhere between 7-15 kn and building into the mid/upper teens by 1:00pm

The snow will probably hold off until the evening, possibly late.