Ice Boating on Lake Pymatuning

Yesterday, Phil learned from the iceboating club he belongs to that there was 7" of ice on Lake Pymatuning. They were expecting 10 - 17 knots of wind - and as I was mostly caught up on my school work except for my essay test, I decided to go with him. Phil was kind enough to buy me a DN (Detroit News) iceboat from a friend of a friend. It was to be 40F and why not give it another try. Usually you're iceboating when it's 10F outside. You can see that my boat is painted pink magenta and almost a turquoise blue color. - Hey! Isn't pink for girls?? Do you like my sexy pose? hah. We were happy that we had all the parts to put it together as this boat is about 50 years old and Ben a fellow ice boater was kind enough to lend us a main sheet. Notice the sail number - 1020. The sails for DN's now number over 6000. I guess I have a classic.

Well, I was lucky enough to have a 2-3 min ride. But most of the time was spent pushing the boat, jumping inside, hitting my shins and waiting for the boat to stop moving, getting out and trying all over again.. The ice was a little soft on top - and when I jumped on, it sank about 1" into the ice. Well, I sure did get get exercise - as my thighs are telling me today. Oh and did I tell about how many times I hit my shin on the runner plank? Here is a link to a news report on iceboating and Phil said that I was pretty similar to this guy.

Phil and I had lunch at the Lil Bit Restaurant in Epsyville, PA just across the causeway. We had great beef noodle soup and Phil had a pizza burger - for about $10. Then we went back to the ice boat and decided to pack it in. We were lucky, Neal and Dix went down to the dam and Neal had to push his boat back about one mile, as the wind had died. Dix was smart to have slush runners

Today we went to Shade Tree Sports in Middlefield, and bought a red helmet (have to match Changes, right?) with a clear shield as even though it was in the upper 40's today and raining, it's expect starting Tuesday to be below freezing and if we don't get too much snow this week, Lake Pymatuning should be great for ice next Saturday. Phil was given some more pictures taken by Dix which you can see on elklakeiceboating.com under January 24, 2010 on the home page.

All I can say is it's a good thing that when I went iceboating the first time more than 5 years ago on Buckeye Lake, that I really had a good time, because it turned out to be not a good time by the end of the day. But it was sunny outside, and we were able to enjoy the sun and being together.