Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Five Reasons Not to Sail an Iceboat


Thanks to Aaron Freeman of The Stern Scoop for good advice: "If you have never sailed an iceboat, don't."

And five good reasons why are...

1. You may lose your job, your spouse and all respect for the softwater sailing that you enjoy so much.

2. You will never again look at the instruments on the mast when they read 10.2 knots and think to yourself “Yeah... we’re really gettin’ some now”.

3. You will have to stifle your yawn as the relatively super expensive boat that you PHRF race slowly accelerates up to walking speed under full canvas.

4. You'll have to get used to not sailing with a crew large enough to fill two big booths at Chili's.

5. Another thing that might be tough for the softwater bigboat guys is the DN only has one sail and it is only a 60 square ft piece of Dacron -- so you might have to tell your local sailmaker to ummm... you know.

Aaron, of course, has his tongue firmly planted in his cheek while writing the above, originally posted in Confessions of an Iceboat Addict. This tale of iceboating is on The Stern Scoop, the house blog of Annapolis Performance Sailing, one of my favorite sailing vendors. As house blogs go, this one is pretty good with an interesting mix of product reviews and accounts of the staff's real life sailing experiences. Check it out.

For more iceboat action, check out the recent posts on Manfred's blog, Regatta, Sailracing, Sailing, DN, Dinghies, Yachts, segeln, windsurf, Segeln + Sailing, Regatta & Cruising Berichte über´s segeln, Empfohlene Lektüre: Speeds & Smarts, monatlich von Dave Dellenbaugh. (I know Germans like long words but that is ridiculous.)

6 comments:

Zen said...

The biggest reason not to sail an IceBoat is. It is HELLA COLD!!

Christy ~ Central Air said...

My #1 reason not to sail an iceboat is that last winter my friend Sue was skippering an iceboat when she caught a gust the wrong way. The iceboat went airborn, flipped over, and landed on top of Sue, cracking her pelvis.

Oy vey. I'll stick with the boring ole soft water.

Anonymous said...

Hmmm. So ice is COLD and HARD? Nasty.

PeconicPuffin said...

I was on the ice two weeks ago and have a few more for you:

1. You can lose a finger (I was told that someone lost his while I was there.)

2. Collisions take place at much higher speeds...plenty of folk going 30+ mph out there.

3. Those speedsters are often sipping from a flask.

4. It's much easier to get hurt.

Pat said...

Actually it's more like a description with key words and phrases. Those are SHORT German words and phrases! You want not to see the long ones, believe me.

Another minus for ice sailing.... it's at its best in places and seasons where there's not much sun.

Fred said...

Hi Tillerman,
Yes indeed, that is a long one of a link which you had put in there. How happened? Don´t you use the one from your link list?

Anyway good fun to read the reasons: "not to do it".
And really, I would not do it, if only cruising around. You would not take a motorbike in a chilly winter to drive from Boston to NY would you? Racing is a complete different thing. Read on in my blog. More reports about the DN racing to come. We are already planing the 7th weekend in a row. Just need to find the best place. No snow. No people. A good ramp. Cars very close to the ice. Wind. People willing to score. And maybe a sauna in the evening. And later maybe time to write the diary (blog). About the last, the "perfect weekend". 9 races in two days. Tough competitors. Lot´s of wind. Close racing.
@Pat: you are about right but from mid Jan it gets a lot better.

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