Skating, ice boating and skate sailing Lake Winnipesaukee

Reports of the best black ice in over a decade propelled me east into the Granite State Feb 15, to Lake Winnipesaukee. The broad expanses of eight inch thick black ice were otherworldly, punctuated with open water at some pressure ridges and great ice pileups at granite jetties. On long Nordic blades a couple of us battled fresh winds from the north, making for heavy going windward and easy gliding to leeward. We skated for a couple of hours.

My mother told me of skate sailing in her youth, something I never put under my belt, mostly because skate sails aren't carried at the sporting goods store. I've planned to make the classic Hopatcong design for years but have yet to get around to it. Tired of missing out, I took a couple of wooden spars, a sheet of Tyvek, some clothesline and lashed it all together from scratch in a Read design, version 1.0.

After lunch I checked out the 30 or so iceboats. The wild winds had one amateur exclaiming he "covered more miles today in my iceboat than all month in my car." Another rank beginner said his GPS put his top speed at 53 MPH.

I launched my ultralight rig.

The winds were shifty in the bay, mostly mellow cruising mixed with gusts providing moments of high speed terror when the wind had its way with me, and a couple of wipeouts. With miles of ice on which to slide, that's not as bad as it sounds, luge crash light. Back at the beach the design gathered considerable attention for use of off-the-shelf parts. A great day, I'm beat up and exhiliarated!

Category:

Sports

Tags:

• lake
• winnipesaukee
• nh
• black
• ice
• skatesail
• skate
• sail
• nordic
• skates

[TrapperVT]

Do a YouTube search on "iceratz Iceboating Lake Winnipesaukee Take 2" and have a look, taken near where I was and at about the same time.

[TrapperVT]

Madogblue, I don't live near the lake, but conditions like this are rare. The lake freezes later rather than earlier and snow falls on it, fouling the surface. A warm period with heavy rain followed by cold with no further storms will do the trick.

[Donov747]

@madogblue i live on it. we usually have a lot of snow a TONS of snowmobiles. this year was wierd because the weather/raid we had flat glass ice and no snow.

[madogblue]

That's cool, what are the typical conditions??