Just to keep life interesting, the weather keeps changing up here.
One day it is cold enough to keep the snow on the ground and set a
downhill speed record, a few days later, it melts the snow on the
lake to a nice liquid and completely off of the sledding
hill, then it gets cold enough to re-freeze… ideal conditions for an
PDRacer ice boat record.
Finally the last two ingredients arrive,
wind and a day off, or at least part of a day. It was also good
fortune that it was February 23, right in the middle of Anniversary
Challenge Week.
The weather change was expected, and the day before was spent making
sure the iceboat was ready to head out early on Friday morning.
This would be the first run of the season, maybe the last, so it had
to count. The winds were blowing about 15 MPH, and I had until noon
to play.
I got to the lake and started setting up, only to find I
forgot the two 4' boards that would complete the front and rear of
the boat that would make it a class legal PDRacer. Luckily, I had
some scraps riding in the back of the truck. A few angle brackets,
hanger iron, and screws and I was in business, not full width, but
close enough for me.
The snow had melted down, but not the ice from the around fishing
holes. There had been a tournament in the bay a few weeks ago so
there were a lot of little volcano looking mounds with 8" holes in
the middle of them that make the going rough, but there was smooth
ice out beyond that. I gently navigated the iceboat out to the
middle and started running back an forth getting a feel for the
wind, then got a few good runs in and returned to the shore to look
things over.
The GPS reported a distance of 3.5 miles and a top speed of 33.6
MPH. I then took off the PDRacer appendage to see how it would do
without it, put on another 6.7 miles and topped out at 35.1 MPH for
the day. My time had run out, so I packed up and headed for home.
Later that afternoon, the weather continued on its weaving journey
to spring, dropping 18" of snow in the 36 hours that followed, and
another 20" later that same week. Another week later and we're
headed for the upper 40's... maybe summer will get here someday. If
not, it may be time for the snowshoe record...
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