Marching towards the Ice

Brian Langley reports that Bella, the youngest sailor in our fleet, is just too big to fit in her BDX-8 this year. She will be upsizing to a brand new BDX-10. The craft will be running a small 24″ springboard to bring it to LOA @ about 12ft. This will sail on a glass mast formerly owned by John Pepper with a clean 45 sq ft skimmer sail.

Brian modified the plan to lighten the overall weight of the hull. The lightening mods include 3/4 x 3/4 frames and truss work, 3/8th one pcs ply-wood floor, and 1/4″ side skins. He believes it should come in right around 60 pounds with foot steering assembly and springboard. The craft also features a nice 7″ trunk for safety gear, lunch etc. And open bulkheads with corner bracing. Given the light weight of both craft and pilot it ought to really scream down the ice.

Also on the building bench are two new BDX-12’s one for himself and one for Doug sharp they should be on schedule for this season’s ice. Doug has been in semi retirement for a few years and this proves that once bitten by the iceboat illness you are a lifer. We are looking forward to seeing Doug back on the ice again.

Go Bella! Good luck with your new rig. With your power to weight ratio you may just have the fastest acceleration out there. Can’t wait to see our youngest member ripping up the ice again this season.

What can I say about this video? There is beautiful ice and a desire to slide across it. Hopefully the wind picked up later as I am sure Charlie S. wore himself out after picking for a while.

We are moving towards that first sail-able ice part of the season but it may out of reach for many of us. Have patience there is will come to your state.

Covid will impact some of our usual pre-ice activities. Traveling to different states to gather and discuss tuning and safety topics may not allowed and not a wise idea at this time. We are looking to focus more locally and are open to ideas and suggestions. Whatever happens looks like we will be staying closer to home so lets start looking locally.

One thing we can all enjoy is the viewing of Bob Dill and Schumacher’s Iron Duck Documentary. I am in the final stages of setting up the group viewing and will make the announcement shortly.

Think Ice and be safe,

John
DN5023
John@neiya.org