While the Ice Flyer excels in heavy air, in light air it has difficulty powering up. While sailing in light air yesterday, I noticed two other ice boats using windsurfing rigs not only powering up faster than me, but their top end seemed to be better. There were two differences in our boats. Their sails were mounted in front and they had a mast hound two thirds of the way up the mast. I believe staying the mast up higher made the difference. The mast tip was not bending over excessively spilling air and the mast was bending in a more efficient way. Almost everyone I sail with has commented on how much power I was losing with the mast bending over. I've stiffened the mast, but I still feel I'm losing power.
My original thought was to install a traditional mast and sail, but now I am convinced staying the mast higher up will move the Ice flyer faster and over a wider wind range. We have a lot of light air days here in New England.
If anyone has tried this, I would appreciate your comments and suggestions. I'll let you know how I make out, if we do not get snowed out this week.
Roger Livingston
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I like where you're going with this. I'm sure you've heard that a windsurfing mast tends to break at the hound. Rather than aircraft cable for stays, maybe a nylon line would soften shocks. I would think that cutting the top off a longer mast would be interesting but I haven't done that either. Good luck.
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One more thing to look at. When you stiffen the mast, some sails will get fuller near the mast. Ive found this slow. You still need too make the sail full for light winds but a fairly flat entry with the main camber in the sail peaking about 1/3 the way back seems faster. This may be one reason that the battens stiffened near the mast seemed to help on the sails Ive used.
Also, Ive noticed that relitive to other boats, the rear sail boats does better in lower drag conditions and worse in higher drag conditions. My experience sailing with other windsurf sail powered boats has been different then yours in all wind conditions but this has also generally been on relitively low drag dry lake beds. I know that when my runners are sticky or there is a fair amount of snow, the IF does not do as well (relitively speaking) to front sail boats - except of course in higher winds.
Good luck with any experiments, Id be interested to see what you find..
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What do you think now about using external ropes or other methods for preventing the sail from twisting off so much?
Our ice boating season (Denver area) was pretty rank this last season so didnt get out much but Im thinking about trying some new sort of mast stiffenting method. Something along the lines of an extra stays up near the top of the mast.
Its still somewhat questionable about the usefulness of this since on good ice (or dirt), Ive found this boat to reasonable fast and maybe dont need to do anything. On higher drag surfaces where I hike a bit, its not so fast and Im not sure the stiffer mast will help here.
But, I thinking about trying something... Any ideas?
Also, I think network 54 (like this one) is about the most obnoxious forum there is for pop up and ect. Its free but so are many other opitions.. maybe we should switch.
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