by Anna Alvsdotter.
High-performance sailing is what many of us aspire to. The dream is to go faster than the wind, but unless you’re on an America’s Cup AC75, or as in this story – an iceboat – the dream might not be so easily achieved.
Being a Sydney sailor, maybe you mourn the loss of Twilight racing during the winter months, even though we’re lucky we can sail all year round. Spare a thought for sailors in the north of Europe, as most of them put their yachts on dry land to avoid ice related problems. I have spoken to an avid sailor who doesn’t let winter get in the way of a good time.
Filip Silfverhielm lives in Sweden’s west coast archipelago in the picturesque seaside town of Marstrand. Come autumn he switches from his R12 Northern Lights to his DN class iceboat. The first prototypes of the International DN (Detroit News) class of iceboats were built in 1936. Unfortunately, they all broke during the first winter of test sailing. After some modifications, a second lot of stronger iceboats hit the ice in 1938 featuring a single-person cockpit, three steel blades in tricycle formation and a 16 foot mast (4.9m). The DN class iceboat is 12 feet long, weighing only 45kg and its sail area measures 60 square feet (5.6 m²).
Iceboat sailing is not for the faint-hearted, with speeds up to five times that of the prevailing wind. Filip Silverhielm, 38, says the challenges are many. He sailed optimists and European Dinghy as a child, and later on the 2-krona and a variety of keel boats. He was on the Swedish America’s Cup challenger Victory Challenge tryout team on Jan Stenbeck’s Mumm 36 Färsköl, and he sailed Dragon class for many years. Filip has skippered various Hallberg Rassy 55-64ft boats commercially and participated in the Cutty Sark Tall ships races on a schooner. The avid sailor regularly races his R12 Northern Lights, and this European summer he’ll compete on a dragon in the Marstrand Gold Cup.
”The high speed”, says Filip in response to my question about the challenges and differences encountered on an iceboat. “It’s a completely incomparable experience when the iceboat speeds up and accelerates like a Tesla entirely without friction. The difficulties are several; the ice conditions for example, as cracks in the ice constitute a danger comparable to getting your bike wheel jammed in tram tracks. Thin ice and open holes, the proximity to other boats and obstacles, and the contrast in speed upwind and downwind are other challenges”, says Filip.
“But for a regular yacht sailor like myself, the biggest challenge is that you can’t read the wind as you do on the water. You won’t spot gusts and can’t tell the wind direction by observing the surface you’re racing on. Instead, you have to rely more on feeling and be constantly aware of pressure differences on the rig and sail. As the iceboat reaches speeds up to five times the true wind speed, a Windex is meaningless. Apparent wind speed (AWS) and angle (AWA) are more important.”
Filip usually sails his DN on the ocean ice where he lives, but also on the many lakes in Sweden. This winter past was an unusually cold one, and Swedes delighted in the rare opportunity to ice skate along the coastal edges, on frozen lakes and canals even further south.
Spring is in the air around Filip’s archipelago, so the ocean ice is no longer reliable if existent. But the lakes are still providing enough ice for Filip’s winter passion. The season for sailing on ice is between November and March depending on where in the country you live. I, for one, am impressed by the skill and nerve required to fly across the natural ice, and I’m reminded of the Swedish saying ‘to have ice in one’s belly’, meaning to remain calm, cool and chilled.
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