| Saturday we were supposed to take my brothers family for a ride, but they canceled kind a last moment. But so far i haven't had to go out by myself if didn't want to , there is always someone willing to come along. | |||
| Same pattern continues with weather: Weather was cloudy and wind was forecasted to raise during the afternoon. Temperature was around 0C (32F) more on the warmer side. | |||
| There were four of us onboard. Now i'm really starting to get the feel how to take the first curve. | |||
| Temperature had been -9C(13F) last night and open spots had again frozen and ice seemed to be much stronger now. All the snow that had been on the ice week ago had wetted and frozen so it was pretty slippery. | |||
| Wind was in east so we headed that way first to direction of open sea. It wasn't that far away when we could see open sea. We went ahead at about 25km/h (15.5mph) to 8m/s (18mph) head wind. Ice was quite thin as we got closer to open area and it broke as we crossed it. I tested stopping the craft and to my surprise we were kinda floating on ice even though ice was more like ice floe. We turned to north and found thicker ice and speed started to raise as we got behind an island. We explored between islands and headed back to west shortly after. It was tail wind so we gained easily 50km/h (31mph) and soon it was time to slowing maneuvers. There was a quite a big crack in the ice. I've heard from people who know ice in this area that it's in unusual place, wonder if it has something to with the fact that i've been there every weekend crashing the ice ? | |||
| Wind was quite cold and hard. Actually you don't notice the wind until you stop and step out of the craft. We stopped to talk to few fishermen who were just examining their nets. They really didn't have that much fish, but few big burbot and pearch. | |||
| We didn't stay there too long. We scared away prowling seagulls as we throttled away to follow crack in the ice. We noticed someone had nets on the wrong side of the crack, that's a pity. When started to head back taking a detour naturally. Sun was peeking behind clouds as they moved away and it was turning into quite a nice but windy day. There were lot of people walking along the shoreline where ice is already 70-80mm (~3") thick. While watching people walking i thought i heard a beep from my pocket and stopped the craft. Got an SMS-message from Erich Breckoff AKA Gargamel or Catweazle. He was asking some tips for skirt installation for his Explorer. Naturally i didn't have time to reply him at that time profoundly. Just "Guess where we are right now ;-))" and i got back to him later with e-mail. | |||
| After sending that short reply i started the craft and mad few large circles breaking the thin ice we where on. You always have to watch for other people when hovering in thin ice conditions. As people tend to go their cabins and summer cottages to do a check-up visit as soon as ice is thick enough to carry a person. It would be a nasty surprise to see that you're path has been cut away when heading back. | |||
| Landing was the best i've done so far. Total of 13,5km (8,4miles) was recorded by GPS today. We didn't have the camcorder with us today as videos of last hovering are still not ready. | |||