iceboating.net Minnesota Ice Sailing Association

1/25 Great day for sailing Tonka, wind about 15 from the east and gusting higher. Only a couple of boats out, 3 Skimmers and one or two others in the distance. Ice was fast with 30% new soft drifts. Able to blast thru without much drag on the runners. The comming snow tonight may slow it down for awhile. If you stayed home today you missed a great time.

Snow, snow, everywhere
It’s covered all the ice,
Now if only it would melt a bunch
It surely would be nice.

The ice yacht is all buried
Out back alongside the garage,
In a mound of ever freighting white,
Which I daily attempt to un-lodge.

So finally the iceboat is ready,
The crack in the mast was just fixed,
The runners are shiny and sharpened,
And the new plank is ready for tricks.

Now if only Mother Nature would help us,
And bring on a night of no winds,
We would have us a bunch of new black ice,
To bring out all the hard water grins.

Thinking Ice,

Corey Hughes, Nite341

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.

wow,

thanks to all the Minnesota iceboaters in who helped me get up to speed. With out their help it would have taken me ten years to get where I am now, if at all. It's really the best part about iceboating, racing around with your friends trying to figure out how to go faster. It's funny because I really like the solo part of the iceboating... but you really have to work in a master/apprentice/tuning partner team type way to get going and to figure out what is fast, and that was pretty great getting to know everybody, the enthusiasm is really infectious. In fact everybody involved in racing DN's have been very helpful with all the questions/problems that I've had.

New Years day was the first day of use for the new blokart ice kit. Ice was fantasic, 4" to 8" and mostly black, but wind left something to be desired.

Had some video taken which has been posted to the web in its first rough cut. Click below if you are interested in taking a look. (NOTE: Video is commercially oriented.) (recommend broadband internet connection for best viewing)

http://www.navstore.com/blokart_ice_video.htm

Enjoy!

What a way to start out 2004. 8+ inches of smooth Black Ice on Lake Pepin with SE winds 15-20mph all day. Need I say more?

I am looking for a used DN mast and sail. Aluminum mast preffered but wood is acceptable. Sail doesn't need to be first rate.
I am in the Mpls/St. paul area and will drive quite a ways to pick up.
Dick Navratil 651-638-0793
www.horzpool@goldengate.net

Several areas to discuss w the members...

1: Corporate status... right now we're probably an unrecorded general partnership, from a legal entity perspective... given the size of the fleet attending our western challenge event, perhaps we should consider incorporating the organization.

2: It's a royal pain to try to score boats, and my understanding is, this is thought as a good thing to do... even if we insist there are no "bragging rights" that come from this event. One thing that would simplify the process is simply registering boats that wish to sail. Capturing name, home town, sail number, etc.

this shot looks sort-of storm trooper-ish

I had a great regatta.

My last two races put me down in the score board, but this was the first regatta that i put it all together for a couple of races and was rewarded with 14th and 15th places. The good news is that I know that i can get quite a bit more speed out of the boat. I have to work on a number of different problems.

- JD will update the trophy, engraving DN Western Challenge for name, and prior winners, such as they are.

- Stephanie will append housing list & prices by noon today, forwarding for posting to this site.

- Additionally, a site for the saturday night clambake will be determined today for posting to the site.

- Dr. & JD will confirm locations of marks & starting blocks & flags prior to Friday.

- Gaps remaining: Race officer(s) of course we expect we may have to split the fleet, due huge turnout expected. If this is the case, we can split the administration... in the alternate, we'll use the "maine plan" for self officiating, using either a toss or average points awarded for the scoring competitor.

Well i got out on the ice and put the alignment plates on my runners and eager to find out how i did in the basement..
not very good.

Doctor turns to me and says, sorry dude.. Way out of alignment. (well not way, way out, but still)

Then we check out Mike's new, but older dn, and his are way closer then mine. And I tried to align mine in the shop! It's times like that, that I realize my shop skills really aren't that good...

[image:279,right]
So back to the drawing board, unglue the chocks, and realign with a better alignment method.

Surprisingly, after less then five minutes of a heat gun and a thin scraper the chock's popped right off. The epoxy had hardly stuck to the chocks. No reason not to glue when they come off that easy. A little sanding and I was good to re-epoxy.

I love it that people are using the blogs and the site gallery. I never know how people will react to the site, but so far i think it's been really good.

It would be cool to get some of the more experienced sailors to do a couple of pages on things like, a racing tack, runner profile and alignment, modern mast tuning, driving in partial snow cover, essential gear to bring to the regatta, etc..

Another thing I'd like to do is to load up all the IDNIYRA scores in a database, then you could graph your ranking, and compare yourself to your archrival, or see your ranking over history, etc..

I had my maiden voyage on the DN I bought from Dave Onan Friday. The ice was reasonable with 2-5 inches, only one small open spot and 10-15 MPH. Jim McDonough, Mark Christenson, Steve Kennedy and an assortment of ice boarders and one kite, made for a small crowd. The DN went together with Jim and Mark's help. Even the runners were in close alignment. Only problem after 2-3 hours was a sore neck! Not the most comfortable position, but enjoyed the speed and jibes. Looks like another great day coming with sun and wind.

It's been two busy weeks in the basement.
I've replaced the rusty nuts and bolts on
the "B.I." boom with stainless steel, cleaned
my stainless blocks, made assembly
stands for installing runners on the ice,
repaired the sail (last week), made a new
braided sheet line (still not sure there).
Aluminum (w/insert) runners are cleaned
and sharpened, may get painted later...

I tried a couple of different methods to make sure they were parallel. I did it with the plank off of the boat. The theory is get the chocks straight and then fine tune with the runners.
we'll see.

first i had 2 48" drywall tees hooked to the outside of the chocks, and then a 5' level to line the to up. I wrapped bike inner tubes around the level and the tee.. and wha-la i had a jig.

But then after i was done i put the level on the chock fore-aft like an runner and then measured each end of the level- back through to the inside of the opposite chock's axel hole. That worked better i think. All and all it took me quite a while.