I cant seem to adjust sheat lines so the sail will rotate side to side all the way to shrouds .Does it need to? Is it imporntant to keep sheat adjuster snug?
Boat is finished,ice is on.need wind, its dead calm.
Dan

Dan

Where are you located that you have ice? Here in the North East, our lakes are just beginning to freeze over. Unfortunately they are predicting snow, so not sure about sailing this weekend. Like you I really want to try my new Ice Flyer.

I had to lengthen my sheet lines that deadend on the plank to get the boom to go all the way to the shrouds. I'm not sure if this is necessary on the Ice Flyer, but there are times when I want to depower the sail as much as possible. Enjoy your new boat.

Roger Livingston

Another .02 on this.. (Arrgg - hope the lengths of ropes given in the plans is correct..)

You can somewhat set how far the sail will rotate out by how tight you set the back sheet rope when you tie it on the boom. If its looser, the sail will sheet out farther. But if you run the sheet looser in the back, its "probably" a good idea to put the bungy chord on the sheet near the two pulleys to take up the slack. See this http://iceflyer.com/plans/sheet_new.html (the two pictures next to the bottom of the page show the bungy chord which takes up slack in the ropes).

I generally like my sheet in the back to be fairly tight and this gives me a little less rotation of the sail but I think its not a problem at all. The only time you need the sheet way out is to get going and lets say the sail can only let out to 45 degrees. If you assume the sail starts working (ie, not stalled) when the apparant wind is within about 15 degrees of head on to the sail, this means that you need enough boat speed to clock the aparant wind around by say about 30 degrees. This occurs fairly close to when the boat speed is equal to wind speed. Since the only time you need to push the boat is in the very light wind where the wind might be 5 mph or less, you only need to get the boat going 5 mph which is very easy. Any higher winds and an ice boat quickly reaches speeds where you never have the sail sheeted out very much at all.

When you park the boat, the sheet will only let the sail rotate by about +/-45 degrees which also generally seems to be no problem but its also a VERY good idea to secure the steering skewed to one side. Then if there is a big wind shift and the front runer brake gets unset, the boat will usually just sit there and "quiver" in the wind or at worst case, do circles. Generally not a problem however and I sail often on a lake which sees 30 to 40 mph gusts from all directions which is about worst case.

I thought only Wally had ice.

My 1/4" thick NJ ice won't even support an iceflyer model ;>)

Jim in NJ
(with a new iceflyer that ain't been run either)

Here in northern wisconsin the bigger lakes took on ice last friday night and its been cold,5 below nights.10 15 days.
I took boat to lake got it riged up just to see it on the ice (there was no wind)and later drilled holes for fishing .Ice was 4inches easy.
Thank you gies for all your imput on boat I will not worry about sheat lines.
Dan

I have a slight variation on the sheeting on a pre 1999 boat. To make the sheet lines, stretch out two 24 foot lengths of 1/4 " line next to each other. Sew together the first 12 feet. Go up a couple sizes on the blocks on the rear beam. That's it. Rig as normal. The Y of the lines should pass easily through the blocks. Setup parameters become pretty lax, longer booms are possible, lines don't get jammed, and the ribbon like main sheet is a bit easier on the hands. No problems through one season.

I misspoke above. Instead of 1/4" line, I should have said 5mm. 1/4" would be too bulky. Rumor has it that we may have ice here in central Iowa this week!