programmes, hull and appendage surfaces, and strict adherence to minimum weight onboard, I always wondered about the quality of fuel put into the people actually driving the bus. This has to be a force multiplier, a key performance enhancer over your opposition – be it sharpness of helming or the navigator crunching data. Better fuel must mean better results. I also started thinking about when people around me were not


eating properly at sea, due to sea sickness or unpalatable food. After about three days at sea there was always the energy dip. Stuff just became harder. The sails didn’t get any bigger or the sail bags any smaller, but certainly in the cold physically and mentally things just took longer. Sail changes became slower and even getting into a drysuit at the start of the watch required a lot more effort. That wasn’t just lack of sleep, I am convinced we just weren’t getting enough proper fuel. Not now. Anything I am doing on the water, inshore or offshore,


I fuel up with one of these new-found Radix meals first, including going out surfing or racing my Finn. There is no other way to describe it – it just works. And to me it is as simple as making the choice of putting a cheap and low-grade fuel in your car, or a clean high-octane alternative. In the 1980s there was an advert on TV for a shaving product, and


the key selling pitch was, ‘I liked the product so much I bought the company!’ I am not in any way shape or form in a position to take over the Radix company – but I am very happy to buy the product. Blue Robinson (who still buys his own – ed)


USA Life in the fast lane The true pioneers of achieving exceptionally high speeds on the water are not those who have been sailing lightweight planing boats, or even foilers that lift clear of the water to face only aerodynamic drag as they hurdle around the racecourse. These pioneers have not invested millions and millions on research, design development, engineering and fabrication of yachts built in the latest technolog- ically advanced composites. No, these designs are from the 1930s, can be home-built in your


garage with inexpensive design plans, and yet on the water can reach speeds of 60mph. These are the iceboaters. Hard-water sailing has been around for generations, principally


in Holland and in the US where the winters are reliably cold enough to have suitably thick ice on the rivers, lakes and canals. The boats have been all sizes and shapes, ranging from comfortable ‘cruising’ designs from the late 19th century to those more recently optimised for manoeuvrability and speed. One of those ‘recent’ designs is actually not that recent at all:


the genesis of the DN class is traced to 1936 when Archie Arrol, who worked in the carpentry department at the Detroit News, with friends Joe Lodge and Norman Jarrait came up with a raceboat they called the Blue Streak 60 (for 60ft2 of sail area). This initial design was fast and light but broke a little too easily, so the plans were modified the next winter for increased strength. The boat was renamed the DN Class, and has developed to be


the most popular iceboat in the world for both racing or just fun use. Success comes from its relative simplicity: the design plans cost a whopping $25 if you want to built one yourself in your garage. To keep costs in check the DNs retain limitations on materials


allowed in construction: for example, the fuselage must be wood with local fiberglass reinforcement and core materials, and rather strict tolerances on panel thicknesses. Planks must be wood, booms alloy or wood, and runners must be steel but may vary some- what in the detail of the blade profile, sharpness and taper – just like having different edges and waxes on skis, DN sailors have optimised their blades for different ice conditions and change them regularly between races as conditions change. Earlier-generation spars were wood but now composite blends


of carbon, S-glass and E-glass are allowed to give control to the complex shapes that influence sail shape. Rigging must be steel cable and sails must be made of 6.5oz Dacron. All constituent parts are tightly controlled in dimensions. Class rules and interpre- tations are published and indeed are set out very clearly. Due to the ephemeral nature of having suitable ice conditions,


the class has developed an interesting method of organising their championship events: specify target dates on the calendar but leave specific details open-ended so that the location is chosen according to where in the region has the best ice. Entries then make long-distance travel plans to be ready, are staged in the general area with their equipment fully prepped and ready to gather at the final destination of choice. For this year’s world championships that location was Lake Win-


nebago, Wisconsin’s biggest at 138,000 acres, located at Oshkosh, halfway between Green Bay and Milwaukee. In summer Oshkosh has a world-class Walleye fishery (the source of the traditional Friday night fish fry cuisine found throughout this region of the US) and is the playground for fast planing boats like the E-Scows. Unlike in the other major iceboat centres along the Baltic coasts,


this winter in the US has been a cold one, with the ice on this huge lake more than 0.5m thick. For the DN fleet of more than 100 boats this meant the ice was very ‘black’, meaning solid and also relatively free of surface snow. In other words, fast racing ahead. How fast? DNs are regularly clocked at upwards of 60mph in


these conditions. The typical 2.2-mile lap at the worlds took under three minutes. Yikes. Veteran America’s Cup skipper, match racer and offshore


competitor Karol Jablonski has been one of the most successful DN Class sailors in the history of the class, with no fewer than 12 world titles to his name. No longer a young man, he admitted to me that the physicality of racing all day long on these boats in multiple races now takes its toll, making it increasingly tough to remain in the top ranks. Yet even after 40 years of racing he still loves the challenge and outright thrill of this kind of sailing. ‘I really continue to enjoy this kind of sailing, it’s been a great


journey, I am always learning and working on how to improve. This is a huge contrast to, say, J/70 class racing, where some small tweaks here and there may make small differences. In DN racing there are plenty of variables with the runners, planks and sails, and small differences are amplified because of the speeds you sail at. Out on the racecourse it is tense, decisions are needed in split seconds – with so much adrenaline it’s really like a drug!’ The clear winner this year of both the worlds and North Americans


rising above the Poles, Estonians, Germans, Canadians, Swedes and fellow Americans was Matt Struble from San Diego (OK, he was raised in Bay City, Michigan, home of the Gougeon brothers, longstanding purveyors of speed technologies). Struble’s mastery of the black ice was the result of an edge that others just could not find on a consistent basis. He attributed this to a few important elements: first, having a


good handle on sail shape control using his Ron Sherry-built custom spar, and what he termed ‘legacy sails’ from Mike Boston of Ullman. One look at the wild curves seen in the DN spars shows how


these two elements need to work together. While there are sails developed and optimised for conditions throughout the typical wind ranges of 5-15kt (more than this the boats are just too scary), Matt thinks the boats are still getting faster and faster, so the preferred shapes need to be both adjustably flat but also twisty. The second element was some serious pre-season training. He


spent eight days in December on Lake Minnetonka in Minnesota trying proven combinations of spars, sails, planks and blades, along with several all-new ideas. After this first session he sent all of his sails back to Mike Boston for further tweaks to the shapes to better exploit his preferred ranges of rig adjustments. Struble also benefited from having reliably fast sparring partners


in these sessions, with the same focus and discipline to chase down the variables in order to isolate any progress contributed by each element. Their routine was to first do short two-lap races, then expand to five or six laps to help amplify identifiable differences in performance. Such disciplined development clearly paid off. ‘This was a great week of sailing,’ he said. ‘We got the full range


of conditions and an excellent field of racers from Europe and North America. The class is pretty healthy, with the full range of sailors from juniors to seniors excited to compete. It’s a great culture.’ So what does Matt Struble race these days when not on the ice?


Foiling Moths, obviously. Dobbs Davis


q SEAHORSE 33


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