Surviving bumps at DN North Americans

There were 72 sailors that traveled to Lake Waconia in Minnesota for the 2024 DN North American Championship on February 26 to March 2. Matt Struble (USA) overcame the bumpy ice to dominate the series, winning most races.

As Tim Oelschlager reports, timing is everything. “On March 3rd, after two days of big big wind and temps of nearly 70°F, the ice is unfortunately deteriorating quickly. The North shore has moving plates, open seems and some open water. I think the fat lady has sung.”

After finishing 21st, Karen Binder reports on the event and lessons learned:

After 4 days of racing the Race Committee did an amazing job of getting off a total of 22 races (11 each for Gold and Silver) in all kind of conditions. Racing was called off on the final day due to heavy winds, but Jeff Roseberry was still out there ripping it up and was clocked at going more than 60 mph.

At the awards ceremony, James Thieler led with a toast and thanked “All the boats, planks, and equipment that gave themselves up to the challenges of ice and big wind this week.” I won’t go into specifics, but lots of iceboaters will need to go shopping and many more will spend some quality shop time rebuilding stuff.

For me, if there is any more time on the ice this season, and definitely for next season, I will make scratch racing courses much longer. At big regattas like the North Americans, the course length is a minimum of 1.0 miles. With good starts, I am able to keep up with the top sailors for the first third to half of the windward leg, but then they start pulling away. When the top ten sailors are just about at the windward mark, the bottom third of the gold fleet are just making the turn at the leeward mark.

So, for me it’s a matter of boat speed across longer courses. I went into this regatta feeling like I am really fast, but on long courses it’s a different story. It’s good to know what I need to work on next.