Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Saturday, October 25, 2008
ASC Winter Sailing
CR-914 Fleet on the starboard lay line.Who said sailing was for summers only in Alaska? This is the dawn of a new era - winter sailing outdoors and indoors!
With two classes of ice boats, the Skimmer 45 and the DN, and the RC CR-914 sailboats there's something for everyone. Even if you are just curious, it should make for some interesting spectating (see iceboat video clips below). The DN has a very active international class association.
The DN is the largest iceboat class in the world, so named because it was the winner of an iceboat design contest sponsored by the Detroit News in 1937. That year the newspaper opened up it's shop to 50 builders who assembled the first fleet of "Blue Streak 60" iceboats (as it was originally named).
The DN (Detroit News) iceboat
Sail area: 60 sq. feet
Length: 12 feet
Hull width: 21 inches
Mast length: 16 feet
Runner plank length: 8 feet
Number of runners: 3 (1 front steering runner, 2 side runners)
Hull material: wood
Typical weight: 100-150 lbs.
Maximum speed: 60 MPH
Typical performance: 2-4 times wind speed
DN Worlds - Check out this clip. And I thought cats were fast! Complete with Le Mans style starts, a crash, some blood and lots of speed! They even 'fly a hull', although iceboaters call it "a hike".
DN North Amercians
And some classic Hudson River iceboating with Stern Steering
Jacobs Iceboats
Monday, October 20, 2008
Iceboats
ICEBOATS
--time for the season change--
some pictures of last year sent by Steve Ryan
these are DN Iceboats--
Informational meeting will be at Conoco Phillips at 6:30 on Oct 29th--
See you there
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
2008 Governor's Cup Results
Tim and Ethan Gould took the honors this year. Second place was Tom Harrison with Geoff Wright in third.
For big boats Keith Barton took first place.
For detailed results follow this link.
We'll be looking for blow by blow action reports via comments to this posting (or your own separate posting if you prefer). See 2007 Governor's Cup for some ideas. We want to leave some narrative behind for future generations of ASC sailors!
For big boats Keith Barton took first place.
For detailed results follow this link.
We'll be looking for blow by blow action reports via comments to this posting (or your own separate posting if you prefer). See 2007 Governor's Cup for some ideas. We want to leave some narrative behind for future generations of ASC sailors!
Fireweed Revised Results
Due to the big boat tie for first and the fact we only have one first place award to present, we've had to apply another layer of tie break criteria as specified in ISAF Appendix A 8.2.
For a quick summary of this rule, please see this link showing a screen print from our Sailwave scoring system.
For detailed revised results follow this link.
For a quick summary of this rule, please see this link showing a screen print from our Sailwave scoring system.
For detailed revised results follow this link.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Governor’s Cup Races
Help! Race Committee Crew Desperately Needed.
Please consider jumping on the chance to experience the new Rescue/Race Pontoon platform – man, is it comfy!
Tentative Race Schedule: Sat Aug 30th – Races begin at 2 pm, 4 pm & 6 pm
Sun Aug 31st – Races begin at 2 pm, 4 pm & 6 pm
Mon Sept 1st - Make up races if necessary
Note – This translates to boats on the water in position 15 minutes before starting signal!
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Wet Wednesday Series 2 - Results
Geoff Wright and his blue Buc took the honors for this season's second Wet Wednesday series. Keith Barton took first place for the big boats. View detailed results.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Wet Wednesday Series Conclusion
Chris Finds Some Dirty Air: Lee Bow to Port, Wind Shadow to Starboard
505 Heaven
Future Racer?
Finish: What's That Geoff - About 1.5 BoatlenghtsMonday, August 11, 2008
Why I Don't Like Sailing
By Karen - while "sailing" in the recent Fireweed Regatta
Why I don’t like Sailing
Reason #1. Wind.
I don’t like wind.
Wind is essential for sailing. Without wind you are, what they call “in irons.” I think that’s pirate talk for sitting in the water on a sailboat going nowhere.
Wind blows. It blows in your face, across your face, and all around your face. It messes up your hair. It blows your hair in your face so that you can’t see anything. It also blows things with it. Wind blows grit and bugs into your eyes so that you have to squint and rub your eyes with your dirty fingers and you still can’t see anything. Its especially annoying if you wear contacts and get grit and other microscopic particles of unknown etiology into your eyes causing the inability to see anything. This is the main reason why I don’t like wind.
In sailing, you are supposed to tell which way the wind is blowing. This is fairly easy to do if the wind is blowing rather strong. However, on a small lake, surrounded by mountains a light wind blows every which way all the time. I seem to be physiologically unable to discern from one moment to the next which way the wind is headed. Some folks say to lick your finger and hold it up in the wind and then you’ll know that the wind is coming from the side of your finger that is cold. All I know is that my whole finger is cold and I still don’t know which way the wind is blowing. So, I try my own method which is equally useless. Lets see, if the grit is pelting my right eye the boat should be blown to the left, but now the boat is turning so the grit is pelting my left eye; has the wind changed direction? Once I get that all figured out its too late and I can’t see anything anyway.
Reason #2. Invisible things.
Wind is an invisible thing unless it is blowing so much grit and bugs that you can actually see its movement. But, that only lasts so long because what the wind is blowing will eventually get into your eyes (reference #1, above).
Another invisible thing in a sailing race, for instance, is the starting line. The starting line is an invisible line between some marker like a buoy and something else. The something else may be something far enough away that you can’t see it what with the wind blowing junk in your eyes.
There are also invisible zig-zags. When people try to teach you the fundamentals of sailing they use paper and pencil or a chalkboard, whatever is handy. They draw arrows to show the wind direction (visible wind!) and they draw some zig-zags. This is to represent the path the boat is taking or the path you are trying to get your boat to go in. But when you get out into the water the zig-zags become invisible.
To me, zig-zags are illogical. I’ve always been taught that the fastest way, or shortest distance, between two points is a straight line. Not a zig-zag line. Sailors make zig-zag lines to get between two points, or bouys or what have you. They call this tacking. They do this on purpose. Give something a purpose and it is no longer illogical. The purpose of tacking has something to do with the wind blowing the wrong way from where you want to go. Heck, if its blowing the wrong way, you just shouldn’t go.
I think they make zig-zags between two points because there’s so much grit in their eyes from the wind that they can’t see anything and have to constantly correct their course.
In a sailing race, all the sail boats go out to a certain point, marked by a visible buoy, and mill about like sheep, making invisible zig-zag lines, and then when they are close enough to the invisible start line someone with a bullhorn counts down to zero and the race has begun.
I have observed that the race itself can be invisible. As soon the bullhorn person says zero, absolutely nothing appears to change in the configuration of sailboats. In any other form of racing there is a significant change in the manner of the things being raced once the race starts. Specifically, that is the people racing or the things being raced suddenly go faster than they had been. In a sailboat race it can take up to as much as 10 minutes for sailboats to cease milling about and start making invisible zig-zags towards another barely visible buoy.
The local sailing club has a race called the Governor’s Cup. I have never seen a governor in attendance at this race, nor have I seen his/her cup. They’re invisible. There’s pirates at the Pirate Regatta (I’ve seen’em), firecrackers at the Firecracker Regatta, and fireweed at the Fireweed Regatta, but no governors.
Once a sailor has located and zig-zagged around all the bouys s/he has completed the race course and now must cross the invisible finish line. You might think that the first sail boat to zig-zag across the invisible finish line would be the winner, right?
Wrong!
The winner is invisible until all the times are recorded and Portsmith numbers are applied. You can’t even cheer because you don’t know who you are cheering for.
Reason #3 Ropes
Yes, I know they are really called lines when they are on a sailboat. You can see lines. You can also see ropes.
You’d think it would be nice to finally work with something you can actually see, but it gets complicated. You can take two identical sailboats and attach the ropes to the sails and guide the ropes around different things in myriad configurations so that one boat operates totally different from the other boat. So, in every boat you get into you have to learn the ropes. (See, the cliché is “learn the ropes” not “learn the lines.”)
And to make matters worse, sailors, finicky little twerps that they are, constantly fiddle with their rope configurations so that what you thought you had once learned isn’t correct anymore and the crew gets yelled at for yanking on the wrong rope that used to be the right rope. Geez!
Or, the color of the rope can be changed. If the blue rope wears out, the intrepid sailor, using sailor logic, will replace it with a red rope, and not tell anyone. So now the crew gets to yell at the sailor for taking the blue rope and/or making it invisible.
Somehow, a sailor just knows what rope is attached to what. The crew would appreciate some labels or at least a legend giving the secret color code, albeit subject to change, before the crew gets into the boat. The crew believes this would eliminate some of the yelling that inevitably occurs when sailor logic and the blinded crew member clash just at the time the wind significantly changes and the sailor must quickly recalculate his/her zig-zags.
So, that’s why I don’t care for sailing. There’s wind, you can’t see anything, and there’s too much yelling.
Why I don’t like Sailing
Reason #1. Wind.
I don’t like wind.
Wind is essential for sailing. Without wind you are, what they call “in irons.” I think that’s pirate talk for sitting in the water on a sailboat going nowhere.
Wind blows. It blows in your face, across your face, and all around your face. It messes up your hair. It blows your hair in your face so that you can’t see anything. It also blows things with it. Wind blows grit and bugs into your eyes so that you have to squint and rub your eyes with your dirty fingers and you still can’t see anything. Its especially annoying if you wear contacts and get grit and other microscopic particles of unknown etiology into your eyes causing the inability to see anything. This is the main reason why I don’t like wind.
In sailing, you are supposed to tell which way the wind is blowing. This is fairly easy to do if the wind is blowing rather strong. However, on a small lake, surrounded by mountains a light wind blows every which way all the time. I seem to be physiologically unable to discern from one moment to the next which way the wind is headed. Some folks say to lick your finger and hold it up in the wind and then you’ll know that the wind is coming from the side of your finger that is cold. All I know is that my whole finger is cold and I still don’t know which way the wind is blowing. So, I try my own method which is equally useless. Lets see, if the grit is pelting my right eye the boat should be blown to the left, but now the boat is turning so the grit is pelting my left eye; has the wind changed direction? Once I get that all figured out its too late and I can’t see anything anyway.
Reason #2. Invisible things.
Wind is an invisible thing unless it is blowing so much grit and bugs that you can actually see its movement. But, that only lasts so long because what the wind is blowing will eventually get into your eyes (reference #1, above).
Another invisible thing in a sailing race, for instance, is the starting line. The starting line is an invisible line between some marker like a buoy and something else. The something else may be something far enough away that you can’t see it what with the wind blowing junk in your eyes.
There are also invisible zig-zags. When people try to teach you the fundamentals of sailing they use paper and pencil or a chalkboard, whatever is handy. They draw arrows to show the wind direction (visible wind!) and they draw some zig-zags. This is to represent the path the boat is taking or the path you are trying to get your boat to go in. But when you get out into the water the zig-zags become invisible.
To me, zig-zags are illogical. I’ve always been taught that the fastest way, or shortest distance, between two points is a straight line. Not a zig-zag line. Sailors make zig-zag lines to get between two points, or bouys or what have you. They call this tacking. They do this on purpose. Give something a purpose and it is no longer illogical. The purpose of tacking has something to do with the wind blowing the wrong way from where you want to go. Heck, if its blowing the wrong way, you just shouldn’t go.
I think they make zig-zags between two points because there’s so much grit in their eyes from the wind that they can’t see anything and have to constantly correct their course.
In a sailing race, all the sail boats go out to a certain point, marked by a visible buoy, and mill about like sheep, making invisible zig-zag lines, and then when they are close enough to the invisible start line someone with a bullhorn counts down to zero and the race has begun.
I have observed that the race itself can be invisible. As soon the bullhorn person says zero, absolutely nothing appears to change in the configuration of sailboats. In any other form of racing there is a significant change in the manner of the things being raced once the race starts. Specifically, that is the people racing or the things being raced suddenly go faster than they had been. In a sailboat race it can take up to as much as 10 minutes for sailboats to cease milling about and start making invisible zig-zags towards another barely visible buoy.
The local sailing club has a race called the Governor’s Cup. I have never seen a governor in attendance at this race, nor have I seen his/her cup. They’re invisible. There’s pirates at the Pirate Regatta (I’ve seen’em), firecrackers at the Firecracker Regatta, and fireweed at the Fireweed Regatta, but no governors.
Once a sailor has located and zig-zagged around all the bouys s/he has completed the race course and now must cross the invisible finish line. You might think that the first sail boat to zig-zag across the invisible finish line would be the winner, right?
Wrong!
The winner is invisible until all the times are recorded and Portsmith numbers are applied. You can’t even cheer because you don’t know who you are cheering for.
Reason #3 Ropes
Yes, I know they are really called lines when they are on a sailboat. You can see lines. You can also see ropes.
You’d think it would be nice to finally work with something you can actually see, but it gets complicated. You can take two identical sailboats and attach the ropes to the sails and guide the ropes around different things in myriad configurations so that one boat operates totally different from the other boat. So, in every boat you get into you have to learn the ropes. (See, the cliché is “learn the ropes” not “learn the lines.”)
And to make matters worse, sailors, finicky little twerps that they are, constantly fiddle with their rope configurations so that what you thought you had once learned isn’t correct anymore and the crew gets yelled at for yanking on the wrong rope that used to be the right rope. Geez!
Or, the color of the rope can be changed. If the blue rope wears out, the intrepid sailor, using sailor logic, will replace it with a red rope, and not tell anyone. So now the crew gets to yell at the sailor for taking the blue rope and/or making it invisible.
Somehow, a sailor just knows what rope is attached to what. The crew would appreciate some labels or at least a legend giving the secret color code, albeit subject to change, before the crew gets into the boat. The crew believes this would eliminate some of the yelling that inevitably occurs when sailor logic and the blinded crew member clash just at the time the wind significantly changes and the sailor must quickly recalculate his/her zig-zags.
So, that’s why I don’t care for sailing. There’s wind, you can’t see anything, and there’s too much yelling.
Saturday, August 09, 2008
Get Ready for the Alaska Sailing Club's 2008 Governor's Cup Regatta
2008 marks the 42nd Anniversary of this classic race series. Races begin on Saturday August 30th continuing through Sunday evening August 31st, 2008 with potential makeup racing Monday. This race has been held continuously, every year since the club was founded. Come out and enjoy the competition by participating, helping out or just viewing from shore while enjoying our last regatta of the 2008 season.
Alaska Sailing Club
Governor’s Cup History
| 1 | 1966 | TOM MARSHALL |
| 2 | 1967 | LARRY SNELL |
| 3 | 1968 | BOB LEVORSEN |
| 4 | 1969 | STEVE RYAN |
| 5 | 1970 | MASON PURCHA |
| 6 | 1971 | STEVE RYAN |
| 7 | 1972 | GARY ROGERS |
| 8 | 1973 | STEVE RYAN |
| 9 | 1974 | STEVE RYAN |
| 10 | 1975 | STEVE RYAN |
| 11 | 1976 | BOB MASSEY |
| 12 | 1977 | STEVE RYAN |
| 13 | 1978 | STEVE RYAN |
| 14 | 1979 | CHRIS KLETKA |
| 15 | 1980 | CHRIS KLETKA |
| 16 | 1981 | CHRIS KLETKA |
| 17 | 1982 | BRUCE ROSS |
| 18 | 1983 | GARY ROGERS |
| 19 | 1984 | DEAN NICHOLS |
| 20 | 1985 | BOB MASSEY |
| 21 | 1986 | BOB MASSEY |
| 22 | 1988 | BEN ROBAR |
| 23 | 1989 | DICK EVANS |
| 24 | 1990 | DICK EVANS |
| 25 | 1991 | DICK EVANS |
| 26 | 1992 | HENRY ROBAR |
| 27 | 1993 | BIRGITT ROBAR |
| 28 | 1994 | JOHN MCKINNON |
| 29 | 1995 | BEN AND BIRGITT ROBAR |
| 30 | 1996 | MATTHEW FLICKINGER |
| 31 | 1997 | BEN AND BIRGITT ROBAR |
| 32 | 1998 | BEN AND BIRGITT ROBAR |
| 33 | 1999 | BEN AND BIRGITT ROBAR |
| 34 | 2000 | BEN AND BIRGITT ROBAR |
| 35 | 2001 | TIM AND TOM GOULD |
| 36 | 2002 | TIM GOULD |
| 37 | 2003 | BEN AND BIRGITT ROBAR |
| 38 | 2004 | TIM AND ETHAN GOULD |
| 39 | 2005 | PAUL AND TAYLOR WILLING |
| 40 | 2006 | TIM AND ETHAN GOULD |
| 41 | 2007 | ROBIN RADER |
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Monday, August 04, 2008
Fireweed
The new Skipper
The Race Director
Chasing Buc's
A cool weekend, light wind, still beats staying in Anchorage
Monday, July 28, 2008
Monday, July 21, 2008
Jim Aumann New Pirate King!
Jim Aumann emerged as the new Pirate King after a hard fought and water soaked battle on the high seas of Big Lake. The “race” included many shady pirate like happenings including a plundering of clue buoys by a certain notorious pirate. The race marshal quickly called upon the big boats to apply copious volumes of water to the offender and many small boats joined that fray.
Once back on shore, after the race, the battle started anew with dunkings, soakings, and buckets of water applied freely.
After a change of clothes an excellent pot luck fed the hungry mob with a large collection of delicious chicken dishes, sides and yummy deserts.
See photos of the event below. This reporter counts about 50 Pirates in the group photo.
ARRRGGGHHH.
Once back on shore, after the race, the battle started anew with dunkings, soakings, and buckets of water applied freely.
After a change of clothes an excellent pot luck fed the hungry mob with a large collection of delicious chicken dishes, sides and yummy deserts.
See photos of the event below. This reporter counts about 50 Pirates in the group photo.
ARRRGGGHHH.
 |
| ASC 2008 Pirate Race |
Pirate Race 2008 Jim Aumann is the new Pirate King!!!
The Skippers and their Crewe assemble for the big race
Captain "Always" gets some direction from Captain "Ollie"Friday, July 18, 2008
ASC Safety Boat has Arrived!!!!
TL, George, Bruce, and Ryan bask in the Sun onboard the new Safety boat!!Sunday, July 13, 2008
Pontoon Party
I would like to thank everyone who came down to give a hand with setting up our new Safety
Boat. Tim, T.L.,Geoff, Jim, Bob, Bruce LaLonde, Greg and his son Thane all gave up a Saturday that didn't include sailing or beer. A special thanks to Greg for donating the outboard motor.
Bruce
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Tim Gould wins 2008 Firecracker Regatta
Tim Gould and his new red Buccaneer took first place in the Alaska Sailing Club's 2008 Firecracker Regatta.
Bruce Lalonde took first place in the big boat fleet aboard his Montgomery 15.
For detailed results see these two links:
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Sailing Club Logos--Vote!
Below are five designs for a new Alaska Sailing Club logo. Jody has suggested that these be posted on the blog to let interested folks vote on a favorite. Check these out and see which, if any, you think might work. Feel free to mix and match elements between the designs.
They are black + white for now, so we can focus on just the design. Once we agree on a design, the next step is to make requested changes (font, color, layout, etc.) to arrive at a final design.
Please reply to me if you have a favorite and/or suggestions. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
Cheers,
Carolyn
They are black + white for now, so we can focus on just the design. Once we agree on a design, the next step is to make requested changes (font, color, layout, etc.) to arrive at a final design.
Please reply to me if you have a favorite and/or suggestions. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
Cheers,
Carolyn
Saturday, June 28, 2008
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