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Hope this link works. Fun article about ice sailing in the finger lakes.
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This article may make me bite on a subscription to this magazine. I had been receiving it free for a few issues but now that is stopping. A great read. Word from windsurfer/photographer Fred Bertram is that they asked him to do some wind sport photo for a possible article in the summer.
ALSO…I thought this post was going to be about our session on Keuka Lake this past Saturday. I’ll add that part I guess.
Friday night brought a flurry of texts from Scott notifying me that some new black ice had set up on the Penn Yan branch of Keuka and that it wasn’t to be missed. After talks on the home front, I bit. Scott of course is a multi-discipline winter ice and wind warrior. He was heading out early with his DN Ice boat, and was packing his 5.5 Kitewing and skates as well.
I left mid morning for the hour long drive to Keuka College where the ice boat crew was launching. My trip took me along the eastern shore of Canandaigua where I discovered some excellent snow free white/grey ice to about a half mile south of Deep Run park, keep that in the memory banks.
Keuka was a risk of a trip, I could have headed to Long Pond where I ripped the ice on a Kitewing and skis to 32 mph. But the possibility of black ice called. Another cool piece to this is that Rick Hobbs a new england Kitewing rider was passing through our area on his way to WISSA (World Ice and Snow Sailing Association) championships in Fond Du Lac WI. He was excited to meet up and ride together. I can’t pass up sharing some stoke with another wing rider.
After travelling country roads that Siri directed me to follow I arrived to a pretty amazing sight. The road into town overlooked the lake where no less than 10 DN iceboats were gliding around the ice. The launch was fairly easy to find thanks to Scott’s directions. Parking was tough……5 more iceboats were in the unloading and set up faze.
The walk down to the water was easy with my skates and wing in hand. The ice was indeed clear and black with many pressure cracks to keep skate blades out off. Rigging in a wind shadow was nice, and the skate out to the wind was easy. The DN guys were blazing and got up to nearly 50 I heard. They had fully organized races going on too. I found a piece of ice that became familiar and I started to let it rip. Wing riding is so much fun!!! Rick arrived and rigged up a new high aspect wing and joined in the action and he and I did a few passes together, then Scotty rigged and joined on his orange 5.5 and we all ripped around. Scott is such a natural athlete, he picked his wing up and I had a hard time trying to hang with him right off the bat.
I had to de-rig pretty quickly and more plans for the day needed me. I felt bad to have to decline a nice IPA from Scott to reflect on the day playing in the sun.
Here’s hoping this little warm up doesn’t last long and refreshes the smooth surface we all want. It may happen that a Kitewing rep is in the area this coming weekend, but that is weather and schedule dependent. Stay tuned.
Wd
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Sorry Doug I figured one awesome kitewing article a week was enough, besides not sure how much traction my ice boat action will get. Since I can’t seem to convert anyone on this site!!
My friend Dave, fed me the intel on the black ice on Keuka. Later he showed me the pic he’d received and it was a crack free image of pure blackness. In fact as he showed me the image we all realized we had been viewing it upside down and the clouds were actually light snow drift on black ice which was reflecting the blue sky above. Not making this up! Too funny. And this was before the beer started flowing.
The black ice developed cracks as the lake surface continued to freeze. We could hear load bangs and cracking sounds earlier in the day. It was a fun day even though we had to pay attention to the orientation of the cracks so as not to catch a runner. I reached crazy speeds that had me come to shore to reassess as last year I broke my mast in half under similar wind conditions!
I was so interesting to see all the technology in some of the racing DN boats. Some of the guys buy boats from foreign world cup racers who don’t want to ship boats back to Europe. After Doug left I took a ride in Dave’s big ice boat, a skeeter class boat. It’s more than twice as long as a DN and it is blazing fast! At one point I had to push my helmet back onto my head as the wind was pushing it back. Incredibly exciting. As I was packing up for the drive back to Rochester, it had warmed up considerably and the rough areas had softened up and boats were still blasting around the lake.
I was really glad to get the wing out onto some nice ice even with the cracks. I find my confidence wanes a bit when I don’t get enough ice time . So this was reassuring and yes I was disappointed you had to go so soon but enjoyed sailing tandem with you! Next time.
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