Ice Ahead and in Rearview Mirror

Rain and near rain has fallen and I like other iceboaters am happy to see some of the white stuff melting back beneath the ice. While our lakes are resurfacing, now is a good time to look back on the great sailing we got in over the past few weeks. Well, before the last storm anyway.

We were sailing on Damariscotta Lake as well as other locations in Maine. We were sailing on Masabesic in New Hampshire. We were sailing on Bantam in CT and a great run on Quabaog in MA.

Our fleet always splits up across New England and the country, for regattas. Last week was the DN Nationals.

It is always harder to travel when there is known good ice closer to home but travel we did. Many of you im sure were following the journey and read T’s recap so I will keep it brief. Nine of us traveled west. Myself, T, Karen, Jay, Eric, Sean Healy, Rick, Ed, and David Silsby.

The 2022 National results are here. Congratulations to Ron Sherry for yet another championship. It was a pleasure to see you smoothly navigate the course. Nothing like my hacking it up out there. All I can say about Karen Binder’s performance is wow! There was no stopping her over the course of two days with five consecutive bullets and the win in the silver fleet. You have all read Karen’s race prep articles and it certainly has paid off. Newcomer Sean Healy really showed some promise and was mixing it up rather well for someone who has not been on the DN line before. Ed Demerest with some of T’s QND tweaks was in the hunt and fighting. Jay Whitehair qualified into the Gold fleet for the first time had some great opportunities to see how that fleet rocks.

The NEIYA will be putting on an iceboat demo and Q and A session tomorrow at Pomps Pond in Andover MA. If you are nearby come and say hello and join in on the discussions. No there will not be actual sailing but as we all know if we can’t sail at least we can talk about it.

When: Sunday, Feb 6th
Where: Pomps Pond – 147 Abbot St. Andover, MA
Time: 10:00am – 2:00pm
And it’s free additional info here

We expect condition reports from all over New England after the weekend. Sout and West are looking good as well as some areas in Maine could come in with big ice. Stay tuned and as always report in with updates to myself other officers or committee members as well as directly to the site’s forum section. The forum has worked particularly well with hooking up people to sail with mid-week. On the forum do take note of when the info came in as some posts might look great but a little stale.

Think Ice
John
DN5023
john@neiya.org