Hello All- Sounds like the Lake Ronkonkoma gang is having a spring fling- details here!

ICE ALERT! – 2016 LRIBYC Annual Dinner

TO ALL:

Some of us did not get a chance to see each other on the ice.

WELL HERE’S YOUR CHANCE!

AND
WE GOT A NEW PLACE!

The LRIBYC Annual Dinner will be Sunday April 17, 2016.

Location: Harbor Crab Co.
116 Division Street, Patchogue, NY
631-687-CRAB(2722)
Time: 4-7pm

				Harbor Crab Co. | Restaurant & Marina | Patchogue, NYHarbor Crab Restaurant & Marina – Where the season never ends! Restaurant, Catering, Parties, Holidays.
				View on www.harborcrab.com	Preview by Yahoo

Price: $40/pp which includes choice of vegetarian,
sea food, and carving station, with dessert, coffee.
Tip included. Cash bar.

We have GREAT videos, excellent conversation, fabulous pictures,
all your friends in one place, and wonderful food.
Don’t miss out on our season’s last get together.

Please bring exact change for the dinner or a check made out to LRIBYC.

Please let me know if you are attending and how many sailors are in your
crew that are coming. It’s important that we show a “manning of the rail”
before we come into dock.

Thank You.

John Ziermann DN5426/Gambit/Treasurer

Harbor Crab Map.pdf

You have to take a look at this video from the Nite Nationals- VERY well produced and edited (aerial footage and more) and a good soundtrack to boot! Blatantly lifted as usual from the Four Lakes Ice Yacht Club website ( iceboat.org )

Check it out! 2016 Nite Nationals

Now THIS is COOL!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6jAFrWuS_w&feature=share

http://outeredgepolarchallenge.com.au/

Jory Squibb checks in with this follow-up to his “Lone Wolf” missive the other day- interesting reading to be sure- see this and more at http://iceboat.me/

I hope others are enjoying this inquiry about the tension between the lone wolf following his bliss, and the worry and sometimes grief that his behavior can cause others. It’s a subject which our iceboat club has discussed and anguished over, for as long as i’ve been a member. One of our most experienced ice people, Bob Dill from Vermont, whose website http://lakeice.squarespace.com/ is a must-read for ice lovers, added this to our discussion:
Hi Jory,
I think you are being too hard on yourself (and that old wolf). Leads and other ice dodgyness need to be explored if that can be done with low risk. How else are we going to learn about the ice?
We had two more fatalities in Vermont last week. One was a 31 year old riding his snowmobile…The other was a 67 year old experienced fisherman going for one more day (it reached 70 degrees!) on Shelburne Pond. It was a tough week.
None of these guys had the equipment, knowledge or skills to stay out of trouble or, failing that, to rescue themselves. Very few of the 50 or so people who die annually on North American ice have any safety equipment and many have odd notions about things like the bearing strength of 4″ candled ice on 70 degree days. An experienced ice traveler with claws, flotation, test poles, throw ropes and enough pads (knee and elbow pads?—ed) to avoid most serious injuries has far lower risk than those 50 fatalities.
That is not to say that we are as well prepared as we should be or that we always make the best decisions. We should work on that. At the end of the day the risk is not zero. We all have to decide if it is close enough to zero to allow us to enjoy the ice as much as most of us do.
Bob
And Bob Lombardo, part of that amazing skating duo, Bob and Karl, who are just finishing their 55th day of the season, responded:
Do either Karl or I ever skate alone? We both do, but I have to say I am more inclined than he, to skate alone. I know it is not smart but I require “alone time”, that is just the way I am. I have even skated on rivers alone and that is really not a good idea but usually that is when the ice is good and Karl is not able to go.
Jory responds….There’s a need for clarity and authority in us that wants this discussion to end with clear rules. “Membership in our club, the CIBC, requires that all members wear claws and floating, cold-proof clothing when on the ice at all times. We also prohibit solitary activities on the ice. Offenders are subject to warning and eventual dismissal.”
As I look back at what I’ve posted here over the years….the times i’ve waxed a bit “cosmic”…the times that even this failing mind has not forgotten…. they were often times of group activity….but perhaps a quarter of them were alone or semi-alone activities…alone in the beauty of wild space….sacred space i sometimes say….without these times…these precious times…my interest in the ice community would still exist, but it would be very much diminished…. club rules, encouraging the facile judgement of another’s behavior, while trying to fill in the valleys of risk, would have chopped off the mountains of joy…. so i’m glad we’re not regulated….i’m glad we’re staying in undefined, open space…
That said, in these past days, i’ve seen important areas to improve: It’s important to have strict rules for racing, and for all boat encounters. It’s important to share knowledge about safety, and to speak up, in a kindly way, about its lapses…It’s important to take new-comers under our protective wing….and above all, the lone wolf must find a human voice… must strive to communicate in spite of the fear that communication will nix adventure…really….you can have your cake and eat it too…
if you’re with others, you can tell them what you’re doing, why and how….you can listen to and take in their concerns…and then… you can thoughtfully act…not as a defiant loose cannon…but as a confident contributor to the community…which is stronger for each diverse, creative member….if something then happens, it has a different feel…there still will be sadness….grief….but the feelings are less conflicted…more positive….though we may have disagreed…on some level we understand, and are connected.

Looks like the Way-Up-North Gang had a good bit of sailing up at PEI- check out Doug Gaudet’s report here:

How much fun can one have in 18 hours?

“Mainlanders”, arrived Friday eve at 12:30 am, we traded pleasantries…… till 2:30am, got up at 7:30am, to Helen’s kitchen breakfast. (Not quite up to Claudette’s style, but we try!)

Then to the ice – 5 boats , then 6, and Danny Mosher at 1pm made 8 boats on Stanhope Bay, in PEI.

We managed about 7 scrub races, between a lot of “fuggery” (that means we tuned between races). A bit of carnage starting after lunch. Danny lost a shroud pin, fixed, then Bob pulled a shroud shackle off next race -fixed and finally in the last race Mike W was warping into the leeward mark, and in the words of Bob “You should have let a little sheet off Mike!” He tore his plank off in a hike and hard plant but as I said “too bad” he, smiling from ear to ear, pulled a GPS out of his pocket and said “But I was going 47.4 knots that’s the most power I`ve ever had.

We returned to Helen`s Kitchen for more “pleasantries“: bruschetta, a pork roast dinner, and a 600, yes 600 picture dinner theater while we sat at the TV big screen. My daughter, her boy friend Jeff and Helen skated on the ice and took pic`s all day.

Hopefully there are 3 or 4 attached. I`m off to Fredericton NB today but will get more pic`s out after I come back tonight. maybe!

Thanks to Mike, his son Mitchell who was sick and didn`t sail, Bob C, Art S and the islanders who showed – John Rankin, Danny Mosher , Wayne Matheson and Shannon Murray.

Doug G

Hello All- If you could get out this weekend you can still see what the gang in Kingston got up to last weekend- watch an be envious!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uFi8znSbW5I&feature=youtu.be

James “T” Thieler12 Channing St.
Newport, RI. 02840

401 258 6230
t_thieler

Jory Squibb checks in with this sobering essay. Read and reflect…

The Lone Wolf

Three things happened in my world recently….”a perfect storm” of….really….enforced reflection:

1. The Hopi elders, in their prophesy for the next millennium said: “ In order not to be torn apart by these turbulent times, we have to let go of the shore, (perhaps meaning our habitual behaviors?) and stay in the middle of the river. (perhaps enter the scary groundlessness of new patterns?) See who is there with us and celebrate! The time of the lone wolf is over.”

2. Bill and I were exploring Great Pond on skates prior to inviting everyone to come the next day….He wanted exploration X….I wanted Y…we agreed on X, but as we skated out of the launch, our paths were obviously diverging….damn it….i was going to do Y…Bill watched me skate off, exploring the curvy, open water lead, and disappear completely from view….when we came together a half hour later, Bill was lounging on the dock at the south end of Hoyt Island…..stonily silent….absolutely livid….”we agreed on a plan, he said. If you want to do scary shit, I can’t do things with you”….over the next days I pouted…hadn’t the tables been reversed an equal number of times?….and hadn’t we often done “scary shit” together?….how could he stand on high moral ground?

3. Trueman Moore, aged 20, was hiking two days ago with buddies in a park on the edge of Lake Megunticook. In the growing darkness, he wanted to take a shortcut across the ice to a lighted house. His buddies strongly discouraged him, but he set off, went thru the ice, and drowned. They could shout to him, as he slowly froze to death, but they couldn’t do anything…

When i go on the ice, i wear picks and flotation clothing…i’ve been intensively dealing with ice for 15 years….i’ve been through the ice 4 times, each with a successful self-rescue…why compare my situation with that of a 20 year old neophyte?….it’s completely different!…..right?

Wrong!….the reality doesn’t depend on fatality… we wolves are human…we’re not simply eaten by jackels when things go wrong…..we wolves are never ‘lone’…our behavor causes real suffering to others. Bill leans on the dock, fuming…angry, yes, but having spent a very fearful half-hour…fear for a friend’s safety….and the more complicated fear surrounding a possible rescue….my hasty self-justifications try to escape the real harm that i have caused…Trueman’s parents…incalculable…..deep…. lifetime suffering….his friends….complicated–even guilty–suffering. Trueman and I have both caused others to suffer.

Last night, i put aside the enticing evening activities, and sat, alone by the fire, as the quiet evening unspooled …the lone wolf… it’s a self-image I often come back to in bratty times, when i need justification for solitary behaviors. Is the lone wolf time truly over? Is our planetary history insisting that this pattern, useful perhaps in earlier times, is so out of synch with the interdependence, the deeper connectedness of people and things, that it is now inappropriate, and even disastrous?
i think of my greatest hero, Shackleton, revered more, perhaps, for his amazing care-taking of his men, than his actual Antarctic exploration. …and i feel ready….here a long, recurring sigh… with a few aftershocks and setbacks no doubt….to leave the comforting shore of lone wolf behavior, and celebrate with buddies a new pattern…. would it really be so awful?…to let go a little…perhaps with older age as an excuse…and to swim in the river of community?

Well said Jory- Please let’s keep Trueman and his family in our thoughts and prayers.

Chickawaukie Ice Boat Club

				Chickawaukie Ice Boat ClubMaine ice boat enthusiasts and friends
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Hey Folks- I’ve always been curious as to why there aren’t more (any?) French sailors involved with iceboating. Their sailing culture is based on speed (the Open 60 monohulls they sail are insane and the giant trimarans they sail even more so) and adventure. You’d figure they would be all over the ice. And yet off the top of my head I couldn’t think of any French iceboaters.

This being the case I was surprised when a French film crew showed up to do a story on the NA champs out in Madison. They shot some good footage and put together a nice little piece- so think back to the French classes you dozed through and have a look-

For the recon-minded there is some on-board footage from winner Matt Struble’s boat….

http://lci.tf1.fr/jt-20h/videos/2016/des-chars-a-voile-sur-les-lacs-glaces-du-wisconsin-8722235.html

Think Ice! T

Peter Burrow sends in this picture of what may be an iceboat predecessor… Wonder if they went upwind at all? Bet they raced them….

Early DN prototypes in China, c. 1600:

_____________________

Bill Bucholz reports this item on the CIBC website.

The NIA

While the CIBC have evolved into primarily a cruising club, we still use the rules of the road. They are just as critical, if not more so, to maintain order in the way we sail: reaching around with the sun in our eyes driving the boats as fast as possible. Please take a minute every now and then to brush up on the rules. We need to assume the other guy knows them just as well as you do. Here’s a nice nod to Jane Pagel who worked long and hard to unify the rules across many different iceboat clubs.

News from the National Iceboat Authority

Jane Pegel has decided to retire from the Board of Directors of the National Iceboat Authority. We’d like to thank Jane for over 50 years of service regarding the management of our racing rules and ensuring safety and fairness is maximized in iceboating. Jane was one of the founding members of the NIA along with Elmer Millenbach, Wally Cross, Homer Seider, and Bob Pegel. Prior to the NIA racing rules, the various sailing clubs around the country had different racing rules which created confusion and hazardous situations on the race course. Jane played a key role as this group worked together to develop the NIA Racing Rules which have successfully served as the basis for iceboat racing since the early 1960’s. Please join us in thanking Jane for her many contributions to our sport!

We’re happy to announce that Steve Schalk has accepted the open position on the NIA Board of Directors. Steve is an experienced B-Skeeter sailor with many years of service on local and regatta race committees. Those of you who know Steve would agree that he is a reasonable and patient person who communicates well and always considers the needs of every class of iceboat participating in an event.

Thanks to Nigel Croxon for skillfully piloting his drone and capturing the struggles of the day.

To view the video as drone pilot / videographer intended click https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl_A9a11sHE.

Nigel thanks again and hope you come out next time.

Still thinking ice,

John Stanton

Just a reminder that we are always looking for interesting content to post here on the site. If you’d like to share some photos, videos, or want to write an article (long or short) on anything even (very) remotely iceboat-related email it to me at t_thieler@yahoo.com and it will find it’s way to the front page.

Cruising, racing, building, repairing, off-season activities, whatever you have send it in!

Looking forward to seeing what everyone is up to- Think Ice!

James “T” Thieler

t_thieler