The Fat Lady who sings of ice-break up has not been heard in parts of Montana and the Maritimes in Canada.
Via Doug Gaudet from the Maritime Ice Boating Facebook Group:
I’m not sailing but the Nites, with Peter McLaine, Angus Orford and Scott Stewart are still ripping Stanhope Bay apart. Here’s a couple of pic’s of the Nites and the three boys at rest . Pictures are by Alex Bruce.
In Montana, John Eisenlohr and friends have been sailing Lake Mary Ronan and applying rigorous standards to maintain social distancing.
The wind had taken the advisement to isolate as well.
Stare down between an eagle and John in his Mini-Skeeter
Time lapse video from Jeff Kent’s 40 hour journey from Boston to Montana. Jeff and his traveling partners Charlie Blair of Martha’s Vineyard, MA and Bernd Zeiger of Kiel, Germany drove nearly non-stop and completely avoided winter storm Jacob with a wide rounding maneuver.
The scorers practicing counting boats on the line.
A quick update before heading to the launch. Our caravan pulled in to the hotel at 9 PM Sunday evening. The winner to the race to Montana goes to Jeff Kent and crew who arrived a few hours ahead of us. The drive was fairly uneventful with a few miles of black ice to deal with in Minnesota. We stopped near sunset at Keelboat Park on the Missouri River in Bismark, North Dakota to let it sink in that we had reached the west. Heading to the launch in an hour and will update later. At breakfast, Peter Johanson, IDNIYRA Vice Commodore Jody Kjoller, and Trey Rose appeared after having driven straight through from the Toledo area. They stopped at the launch before coming to the hotel and planted the TIYC colors.
We were somewhere around Alma Center on the edge of the snow line when the coffee began to take hold and the wireless hotspot was strong enough to post. We should make Montana sometime tonight, Glasgow to be specific, population 3300. Lewis and Clark traveled within 15 miles of our sailing site on Fort Peck Reservoir, which has to be another first for an iceboat regatta.
ice sailing is not new to Montana nor Ft. Peck. Canyon Ferry is legendary for ice boating but this will be the first major regatta west of Minnesota. Our ice sailing friends in Montana, John Eisenlohr, Dave Gluek, and Dale Livezey have given advice and done some legwork that will result in a bunch of hardcore ice sailors converging on a 350 square mile sheet of ice. Fort Peck DN sailor, Tim, has scouted ice in brutal temperatures. Thank you all, for everything and for the adventure.
With apologies to Hunter S. Thompson, every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is to load up a pile of 440 stainless and then drive like a bastard from Madison to Montana with the music at top volume and at least a pint of ether (for the lock de-icer.)
The snow storm that rolled through the Four Lakes area is now headed east to temporarily cover up any sailable ice they may have. In the good news department, Joe Norton, the Admiral of Green Lake, WI, reported on his Facebook page that the “west end of big Green is still open! East end may blow out if wind comes up. We may have dodged a bullet!”
Co-PRO Joe Norton, event chair Daniel Hearn, myself, and the rest of the race committee of the DN North American championship are patiently waiting for confirmation that some of the only ice in North America is suitable for the regatta. If it happens, we’ll experience some serious seat-time as we drive to Fort Peck Reservoir in northeast Montana, a 15 hour drive from Madison (longer than a flight to Europe!) DN sailors from Nova Scotia, the east coast and beyond are driving west, taking the gamble that it will all work out. They don’t want to miss being part of something historic, the first continental iceboat regatta ever sailed in Montana. Where ever we go, I’ll post my personal updates here. Following along at the IDNIYRA and New England Ice Yacht Association websites.
Via John Cassidy and the Montana Icebuds Facebook page, looks like we have first runners on the ice in North America and quite possibly the world. This DN sailed on Ray Creek on Friday, November 1, 2019. Ray Creek is part of the famous Canyon Ferry watershed.
