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Streaming On Line- Island 92, from tropical Sint Maarten,

Now blasting hot music to the frozen north!

http://pjil.streamon.fm/player/player.php?username=pjil&stream=44k&type=1

What a hoot!

Interview on iceboat racing to air on March 29 http://twitter.com/oceanmedia/status/1360243539

Faster, Faster, Faster Until the thrill of speed excedes the threat of death!

4695

Played golf on Parkview this morning and sailed on Prior 1:30 12mph winds...

Driving back from Pepin WI, listening to some great tunes (e.g., http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtuvXrTz8DY ), enjoying the spectacular vista's of Lake Pepin, and knowing the aches of a triple digit mileage sailing weekend will be with me for a few more hours... first it was just a flash across the windshield, could it be?

Yup, Coming down a hill at about 60, yup there's another...

Bugs in the windshield... I think it was a moth.

I'm pretty sure when they start hatching for the season, the lake nearby is toast!

Some photographs...

Ken Smith, Dan Heaney, Jori Lenon:

The Pits Saturday, 8:00am:

The awards:

No sailing today...
The wind deities neglected to favor Lake Pepin with wind until well after the regatta was called "complete" and most people had packed up. Many of the local sailors (including two Ice-Optis) were out ripping around in the freshening breeze as I pulled out of The Pickle Factory parking lot at 2:00pm.

A course was set in the light morning breeze, and a race was started. Steve Orlebeke missed the time-limit on the first lap by two minutes, and the black flag was run through the fleet on the 4-wheeler.

The light morning wind filled in nicely allowing five races. The ice got progressively softer all day, but I didn't see any particular runner that was dominating. The sticky ice and 10-15kn breeze made for pretty high loading on equipment, and there were a couple of runners broken, along with one mast.
Preliminary Results are posted here.

I wimped out and only set my boat up before heading into the Pickle Factory for dinner. Tom Meyers, Markham Chattertom, Pete Johns, and some others ripped around the lake all day. Adam Koller arrived around 5:00, setup his boat and headed out for 45 minutes of sailing before sunset. Ed Newcomb and his son were sailing their steern-Stearer and Skeeter (Ken Whitehorse's old "Fast Buck) all day, too.

I'm planning to leave straight from work tomorrow, so I loaded up the boat and gear this evening while it was warm and the sun was still out (thanks to the earlier Daylight Savings Time switch!).

I'm hoping to get to Pepin around 4:00pm Friday and setup the boat so Saturday morning is a little less hectic, and I can help out with registration and stuff.

It seems like we're sailing a lot of regattas on Lake Pepin lately. Two NA's and a couple maybe 3 Western Regionals come to mind, including this upcoming one.

Why is it that we seem to be rotating our regatta launch sites from Lake City, MN to Pepin WI and back, sailing on one side of the pond for one event, and on the other side of the pond for the next event? (open in seperate window) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6xmPQEgLGg

I don't know if this is by design or just the natural order of things DN, the DN way of doing regattas.

Garrison Keillor: The delicate art of brotherly love

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/40668967.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyq...

The passing of an "Ice Sailor" whom we did not know around here.

Well worth the read.

4695

One item I didn't repair on my DN was the bow-tang. It got twisted a bit in the crash, but it still fit nicely on the hull (it just wasn't quite centered...). I figured the forestay loads would straighten it out, and after a day of sailing around in winds around the teens to 20 mph it looked brand-new again!

Also, after said day of high-wind sailing, I'm pretty confident the repairs will hold up. I haven't checked everything with the proverbial "fine tooth comb", but so far I haven't seen (or heard) anything that would cause me to worry.

After a day of sailing in 5-10 mph winds on some fairly rough ice, every thing is still holding together...

[3/1 Update: still holding after a long day of hard sailing in high-teens and low 20s]

Well, it's all done! I've never had so much trouble mounting plank hardware. though. Yesterday the holes stripped, and today I got the hull plates mounted too close together! Argh.. Luckily, I was able to simply shift the plates and drill new holes, so it was only a minor speed bump, but I'll certainly be fixing things as soon as I can get back into the shop (probably not before the Westerns in a week).

Two more hours. Total = 35

ABC News Good Morning America will run a story on Ice Racing, pitched and filmed by WIRC Collaborator and Racer KA 2, Peter Norton, of Rum Jungle Media, at 2008 Great Western Challenge Regatta, in Osakis MN on December 5,6 & 7.

I'm told the story will run on ABC News, Good Morning America on Sunday March 1, and most likely also available on their website after the story airs.

read more... http://www.worldiceracingcircuit.com/Forum/tabid/63/forumid/2/threadid/1...