iceboating.net Minnesota Ice Sailing Association

Regatta Done.

Because of sticky snow and high winds with impending blizzard to hit at noon. The regatta has been completed.

I posted some pictures in the image gallery.

I made my goal. I had a 17 ranking going into the regatta, and I got 17th position. The 17th was at last years NA Thunder Bay regatta, so getting 17 in the worlds is great.

Now for the North American Championship...

What a day..

five races in for the gold, 4 in silver and bronze.

In the last gold fleet race the wind was blowing the snow off the lake it was really great.

have to take the contacts out now.. more later..

and JD has pictures to upload..

and Hey, I got an 8th in the third race!

and JD won two races.

The ice was okay, the course length was good today. There was moderate to light winds throughout the day. The Tee runner body was just hitting the deeper drifts, but there was a little bit of snow over the entire lake, so all of the different runners made an appearance throughout the fleet.

I ran on my 30" Tee's.. the lightest runner I had, and the only ones in the fleet, and just after the start of the first gold race at around 3:40 or something.. the wind completely shut off and my boat wasn't going..

Peru, IL

turns out 300+ miles south and it's pretty warm.. 20 degrees seems really nice..

There was some dense fog on the last 20 miles..

tomorrow out on the ice early.. and sail sail sail before the next storm on tuesday...

"and we're going to do what they say can't be done.."
- smokey and the bandit

less then 100 miles to go to Peru, Illinois.

Expectations have been reset.. and now it looks like a blustery regatta..

early morning checkin 8:00 - 10:00am at hotel.. then opening ceremonies at 11:00 then racing at 1:00pm.

I also heard there might be early (late-night) check-in at the hotel this evening.. to help with the morning rush hour.

we are out at the launch site and the finish-canadian-us ice checker team, (L37, KC5449, US60) are out blasting through snow drifts.. it looks really fun.. (sort of jealous)..

but I'm not sure if it's too race-able

It was great to see everybody and to catch up, but when we came out there was quite a bit of snow..

We are all going to be excited to head up to the racing area 30 miles north in the mornng and see how much snow is on the racing area.

we arrived and are heading to the bar... we got in about 40min before the snow.

THINK ICE

driving through the snow..

travel day.. so we took awhile getting out of town, we all did the last of our chores, loaded up the runners and the dogs and left the Twin Cities at 1:00pm.

Current location is hwy 29 in the snow.. radar shows us to be in the leading finger of the snow fall..

602,4961,5214 & Neil reporting all's well

As the snow maps indicate, the area is pretty much snow free. Ice is about 9" deep but surface would be a bit slow (spongy). I've been trying unsuccessfully to ice sail these twenty or thirty miles of Mississippi backwater mazes for about ten years. Whether wind gets here before snow or a thaw is problematic, as usual.

As the big press to identify a site for the DN Worlds which begin late this week, sailors will be out on thin, perhaps perilous ice in two or three time zones of North America looking for that elusive combination of: a perfect sheet of ice, big enough and thick enough; a forecast that is dry enough, warm and windy enough; a launch site that will accomodate the fleet, friendly locals, and all the other variables... some of the areas being scouted are believed to be very thin, freshly frozen sheets of ice.

Today was a day for finishing up. The big project was mounting the plank to the hull and doing an alignment. I also spent some "quality time" on the sharpener getting rid of a couple of small flat spots on my inserts.

Well, today the everything came together for the first time. There were no parts (at least temporarily) left in the box from when I disassembled the boat after the crash.