Sunapee Ice Sailing – the good, the bad, & the ugly!

Although completely snow covered on arrival this morning lake Sunapee showed herself in fine form today. Some uncommonly brave new sailors inhaled their first ice chips at speed and a light gaggle of cold blooded veterans got a handful of mother natures rowdiest winds coming down from the northwest. I overheard one sailor say they measured a gust of over 40mph and I heard others say they were ringing the bell at 40-50mph at speed…. and that is on 3/4” of hardening snow base! Crazy. I’ll forever recall the 80’ snow contrails blazing up from Kate Marones runners as she looked so calm at the tiller. An amazing day.

First, the good news…. nobody got hurt. We did have a couple of cartwheelers and a bit of hardware was pushed beyond its limit but we all made it back to the pits with pre Covid type ear to ear smiles. The bad news is that toward early afternoon it became inherently unsafe. More like vicious. Survival mode for those without storm sails. So in light of higher winds forecasted for tomorrow (gusts high 40’s) I can’t say in good faith it is wise to sail at all. We were not able to race today as it was way too sketchy and tomorrow will be worse. I for one don’t want to break my boat so I will not be there.

Stay tuned to this NEIYA homepage. Word has it new ice is forming on the big lakes and the forecast looks to be settling nicely after tomorrow.
Elbows in!

Contact me if you lost a single black rubber ice gripper.

VC Jay Whitehair