iceboating.net Minnesota Ice Sailing Association

My personal measure for the "goodness" of spring (and fall, for that matter) is how long I have to wait between the last iceboating and the first soft-water sailing.

The sailing season is done (at least on the hardwater), so that means the building season is started!

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Yesterday we decided to get a couple of photos of our boats with the State Capitol building in the backround.

Im stuck in Duluth Mn for the winter. Normally I would be sailing a south bay scooter over on Long Island NY. I know that there are a couple of scooters out here but have no idea where they are located. If anyone has an idea let me know. Thanks

Scooter you ask?...See ice-scooter.org

Best Regards
Dave Farrell
#202 - FLUKE

Anybody interested in a project of old stern Iceboat..let me know at hardybaehni@visi.com or call me at 651 429 0494 MN ..
could deliver WI IL, MI..

I'm not really a part of this blog, in fact I don't know what iceboating is. But I saw the name Vince Labozzetta on the site, and since our last name is not very common I wanted to try to drop him a line. So, Vince, if you're out there, I'd love to chat and see if and how we are related. Thanks. Jonathan Labozzetta. Jlabozzetta@yahoo.com

Sunday 2-20:
I'm back home in Monona this morning after waking up to 3" of fluffy snow in Oshkosh with more on the way. We've only got about an inch here in the Madison area. The storm tracked farther north than predicted. There was a nice turn-out at the banquet last night. I'll post full results and photos back over at my home port of www.iceboat.org.
NIYA Regatta Winners:
E-Skeeter: Dan Clapp
Renegade: Tim McCormick
DN: John Dennis
Boe Skeeter: Steve Schalk
Stern Steerers Overall: Jay Yaeso
A Stern: Fred Stritt
Look for more results over at www.iceboat.org.

Saturday 2-19:

Ice Safari
Elk Lake, Mi
Feb 11th, 2005

It's our second trip to northern Michigan in 5 days. First was the Central Region and then in the same place the next weekend it was the North American Championship. Next year it would be nice to go on a month long ice safari.. none of that pesky four days of work between iceboating and driving.

The 2005 North Americans was a great regatta. We had great ice and wind all weekend. And friday was a great day as well.

We left minneapolis on thursday night at 8:30pm. Since this was the second time we drove to michigian, and we didn't have a dog with us, (he was with us when we went to the Centrals the previous weekend) we managed to shave some time off and got to sunny's cafe (torch lake, mi) at 7:10am for their tasty omelets.

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."

I had a pretty cool time. I got seventh in the Silver fleet and so I got some hardware and something to build on.

My brother was in key west with his mumm 30, champosa, for the exact same time and came back with a sixth.. and that's pretty cool too. Of course down in key west, it's gold fleet all the time..

Iceboat regattas are hard because when you first get to the launch site and setup you are all amp'd to go racing.. but first you always have to pay some dues.. It's tough to hold a iceboating regatta at a certain time.. I guess they used to reschedule to wait for the good ice, but nobody liked that either..

I updated the regatta photo galleries.

sorted the regatta dates out, and put the gear pictures i took at the 2002 NA millacs in a proper folder. the regatta gallery is filling out nicely, thanks to geoffs .

the site doesn't have 2003 north americans pictures. so anybody with a couple of 2003 north american pictures.... anybody...?

I also uploaded some 2004 nite national pictures from lake christina, mn that were sent to me.

I uploaded the coot pictures from ashby, minnesota.. ;-)

that's it for now..

and as to my dismall performance in the western regional...
why does it take me 6 races to pull my head out of my a**?

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!

Constructing a NITE plank, by Corey Hughes, NITE 341, 2003

The original gull wing plank of a NITE is well suited for its intended purpose, i.e., handling the weight of the captain and a passenger. But my 1974 plank had developed a nasty twist and was also really wild in heavy air. Being an old motor cycle wheelie fan of many years, I loved the ability to throw the NITE in the air at virtually any given moment, even with a guest aboard. But great hikes aside, you do go faster if you stay closer to the ice. After several conversations during the spring and summer of 2003, fellow GTIYC member and friend Bob Gray convinced me, that with his guidance, I could and should build my first plank. A retired airline pilot and expert DN builder, Bob’s knowledge was a thing to behold. Grabbing pencil and paper, Bob spit out wood characteristics, flex strength values and formulas faster than I can remember my own children and grand children’s names. Although he kept reminding me that he had never built for anything other than a DN, I was convinced anyone with all those numbers at the tip of his tongue couldn’t be very far off, and as it turned out, he wouldn’t be!