Ice Breakers

I didn't sign up for frostbiting this year. I thought I would take one winter off and return to Laser racing in the Spring with even more enthusiasm than usual.

On the other hand, I did go out for some solo practice on my Laser on a couple of days in January in Rhode Island.

And I can't help reading the accounts and looking at the pictures and videos of the sailors who are braving the elements to race Lasers or Sunfish through the winter here in the north-eastern United States.



The sea has been freezing over in some places. Here is what it looked like at Sea Cliff YC on Long Island on Saturday.

Photo posted on Twitter by @wetpantssailing

But all that ice didn't deter the hardy Sunfish sailors on Long Island.

Here is a video of the Sunfish frostbiting at Sea Cliff yesterday - Superbowl Sunday. The video is from the YouTube Channel of sunfish82634 and was also posted by Lee.J.Montes to Facebook. (I have a sneaking suspicion that sunfish82634 and @wetpantssailing and Lee.J.Montes may actually know each other quite well.)

"Neither ice nor snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these sailors from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." I think that's how the quotation goes, isn't it?

I have never done frostbite racing in Sunfish but I have broken through ice to go Sunfish sailing on a few occasions on New Jersey lakes.

Long-time readers of my blog (both of you) might also like to know that the beach in the video is exactly the same place that we launched from on the day I wrote about at Turkeys and Chickens. The conditions were different on that day. There was no ice and the air was full of flying koalas. At least that's what I wrote in my post.

Watching this video made me quite nostalgic for both Sunfish sailing and frostbite racing.

If I actually try to do anything rash based on either of the aspirations in that last sentence… please shoot me.