Hello! I'm a blokart and iceboat sailor from the US midwest (Madison, Wisconsin).

Locally we landsail on parking lots, but our group makes regular trips to other locations (Ivanpah dry lake in California and Bader Field in NJ).

I also sail a DN iceboat around the country, and I'm the North-American Secretary of the International DN Ice Yacht Racing Association (IDNIYRA).
There's a group of us who get together and build/restore/repair iceboats (and sometimes our blokarts...).

Cheers,

Geoff S.
blokart: US-56-BB - DN US-5156

Hi Geof. That blowcarting looks like a lot of fun. I'm surprised that the tacks are that fast. It seems like you don't slow down at all. Good stuff.

What a great spot to landsail , thanks for the vid

Saltylips said..
What a great spot to landsail , thanks for the vid

Hi guys, hows everyone,, saltylips, you guys still coming to kingston ?

Saltylips said..
After watching GeofSobering's blowkart video, I'm slowly sinking into a future with a blowkart.

It's really hard to beat the blokart's fun-per-minute.
I keep my frame assembled in the back of my Subaru so it only takes me 7 1/2 minutes to go from parking to sailing.
Occasionally, I'll stop somewhere and sail for a half hour on my way home from work, or even go sailing over lunch.

The course in the car park video was only 90 m (300 feet) long so you don't need a lot of space to have good fun.

Big spaces do have their attractions...

Thats really cool Geoff. It seems that you are able to sail very close to the wind. I presume closer than what a water sailor could do. 5.5 meter sail!!?? That sounds big. I guess that for my sand sailing I should not be shy about the larger sails.

What a difference 12 days make!
Last time I got out in my blokart it was 63°F (17°C) and sunny.
Last Friday the temperature was just below freezing and the sun was nowhere to be seen...
I forgot my iceboat facemask and goggles, so my face got a bit cold in the 10-16kn wind (nice rosy cheeks...).

Hopefully we'll be iceboating next weekend! (maybe up in Canada, though...)

searunner said..
Very cool Geoff, the rigging is interesting. Surprised to see the downhaul going slack as you sheet in. I think I would do well to copy it.

You should be careful about extrapolating the blokart setup to your boat.
The geometry of the blokart gives the downhaul a kind of strange combination of vang and downhaul characteristics.
Much of its effect is to keep the sail flat when the sheet is eased (ex. "vang sheeting") rather than the more "pure" downhaul effect of shifting the draft forward on the sail.

It's not unusual to see the downhaul go slack on the downwind leg of a race because it's eased at the windward mark to let the draft increase for acceleration.
Then as the kart accelerated to "cruising speed" the extra power isn't needed so the sheet is used to flatten the sail and take the load off the downhaul.

In the video above, I was essentially always accelerating out of a corner, so I just left the downhaul off all the time.

You can see a really good example of "big course" blokart downhaul use in many of Scott Young's videos.
He will release the downhaul completely rounding the windward mark, and pull it back on sometime just before or after rounding the leeward mark as he heads back upwind.

In this video Scott is rounding the windward mark (and heading downwind) at the 2:30 point.
At 2:39 you'll see him quickly release the downhaul.
At 2:46 he's heading into the leeward mark and pulls the downhaul on (again very quickly).
You can see the slack in his downhaul before he pulls it back on.


I've even gone so far as to rig my kart so I can preset how loose the downhaul gets when I uncleat the primary control line:
http://forum.blokartworlds.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=79

searunner said..
I'm glad that you mentioned doing ice boating. First, that must be awesome. Second, I've been thinking about how cold my beach is going to be this winter. I must remember that you ice boaters have doing this cold sailing for a long time.

With the right clothing you can comfortably sail down to 10°F (-12°C).
Below that the wind-chill get's pretty brutal and it's possible to get frostbite on accidentally exposed skin very quickly.
One of the hardest things to keep warm are your hands (esp. when you're gripping a sheet).
I really love these gloves that come from ice-fishing:
www.farmandfleet.com/products/474137-hi-tech-fishing-polar-eskimo-mitts.html

Cheers,

Geoff S.

My first local sailing of 2016!

I'm still amazed by this sport!
From my GPS track (geoffs.net/tracks/2016-01-23_Monona.html) I was sailing upwind at about 45 km/h (28 mph) and downwind at well over 60 km/hr.
All this with about $3500 USD worth of kit...
Who needs an AC 45 catamaran when you can sail as fast on ice or land?

Today I got to sail a friend's Renegade iceboat. It's a bit larger than my DN and was a real hoot to sail in the 19 kn (gusting to 25 kn) breeze:

I'm looking forward to the northern hemisphere summer sailing season so I edited some video I shot last September...

Good videos thanks for posting !

Nice video, especially the second one with the drone shots.

God dam I wish we had some ice lakes over here in Aus.

We did but they all evaporated a few eons ago