Sailing on ice

GP14 & 470 sailor Graham Nelson is blown away by his maiden voyage on a 60-knot ice yacht

A Swedish ice yachter takes a running jump

Ice boat sailors like to do things differently. The 2002 DN ice boat World Championship was originally scheduled to take place in north-west Poland at the end of February, but two weeks beforehand it became obvious to the organisers that the warm weather was causing problems with the ice there. The event was relocated north to Parnu, Estonia, with Sweden acting as first reserve. The ice in Parnu then unfortunately drifted off into the Baltic on the Tuesday before the start, and the event was hastily moved again, to a frozen section of the Baltic 60 miles south west of Tallinn, held in place by a chain of islands four miles off the coast. Four days notice was then all it took for 240 iceboat sailors to descend from around the world on the small Estonian fishing town of Haapsalu for an event called 'Poland 2002'.

There was a small British team at the event, comprising of Chris Williams, Neil Marsden, more at home in a GP14 or Enterprise, and Gareth Rowland, usually a sand yachter. Needless to say, there is not much scope for practice in the UK, and the British team were not expected to do well in the grand scheme of things, but ice boat sailing is one sport which can be done for the thrill alone. I hitched a ride and travelled to Estonia with the team to try my hand at ice boat sailing for the first time, with a view to racing next year.

The DN class ice boat is basically a thin, 12-foot wooden box with two runners (skates) at the back, separated by an 8-foot long plank, and a runner at the front for steering, by way of a tiller. There is a fully battened sail and a wing mast, which is all it takes to power the craft up to speeds of 60 knots. As a sailor more used to racing a GP14, this promised to be a whole new experience. The DN World champion, Ron Sherry, told me at the event that he never tires of watching experienced sailors try ice boating for the first time, and after my first ride I could see why. As an experienced dinghy sailor, you know all the theory. You know about apparent wind and you know it is going to be fast, but none of this matters. Nothing can ever prepare you for the first time you sheet in a DN ice boat.

After making myself comfortable in the cockpit, I pulled the sail in and slowly trundled off towards the bay. It is normal practice to push the boat up to running speed before jumping in, but I thought this technique could wait. The boat built up speed slowly at first, then suddenly burst into life, accelerating harder as the apparent wind took over. As the speed increased it was necessary to sheet in harder to stop the sail flapping, and as I sheeted in harder the speed increased again. The feeling was similar to accelerating down the runway in a passenger jet, where the speed just keeps on coming.

Page 2 reveals the dangers of the leeward mark...