Winter And Iceboating

Not very often that my blog entries are in English, but there’s quite an interest in iceboating at the moment, so to make it easier for everyone I decided to post in English this time.

Windsurfing is almost impossible at the moment, only the more than dedicated deny the cold environment. I decided that windsurfing in these cold conditions would not really bring a lot, and instead focus is elsewhere. Our local spots are closed due to ice, since the end of last year it has been below freezing point every day, including daytime. With temperatures in the -2 to -13 degrees Celcius range you need different equipment to enjoy onwater activities.

At the begining of January I incidently came across an iceboating website which caught my attention, this combined with childhood memories of iceboat racing with the yacht club, inspired me to buy one myself and head out. What a good decision as I’ve enjoyed many hours on the frozen waters during the last weeks. Iceboating is in a way quite similar to windsurfing, but then again not. The achievable speeds are a bit identical, although once you get your iceboat tuned in, then you’ll easily excess speeds in the 65 to 75 km/h – and there’s even more. I myself have achieved to clock in 84.3 km/h and at that time the boat wasn’t tuned in as well as now. This weekend I managed 75.4 km/h, an ok speed taking the environment into consideration, quite a lot of snow – no black ice, and some quite scary conditions where you had to be very carefull not to hit the snow which was building up obstacles.

Have lot’s more pictures – check out the Iceboating gallery in the “Billeder og Video” section of the site.

Forecast looks to favor iceboating for at least 2 more weeks, stay tuned.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 00:01. It is filed under Generelt. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.