| Series of "perfect weather days" continues. This must have been the top of all so far. Absolutely no clouds, temperature ~0C (32F) and no wind. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| My friend Janne S. was coming over for a ride. We had planned this in advance and luckily the weather turned out to be like it did. There was nothing to stop us from spending the whole day out hovering. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| We started with four people onboard. We first took it to the bay where we chatted few minutes with my girlfriends father. He is a regular crew member of Explorer operations but today he was going to spend his day fishing. This is why we examined the path across the crack in the ice earlier. Also we left one of the four people onboard to help him out. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Three of us left in a sunny weather to explore new places. My friends parents have a summer cabin of their own near the wind mills i've written earlier. We decided to go there and check if everything was in condition as it had been left in November. We had about 15km to get there, and we got there rather fast. I could comfortably push ~50km/h (~30mph) in open bay and only to slow down a bit to hit the correct line under bridge we had to go under. We had to cross few open areas, but that's not an issue for hovercraft. There were more people fishing and just walking on ice than before. Weather was so good that it's not a miracle. We checked up the cabin and shed and everything was in order. We then had coffee break (without a coffee though) and enjoyed the warm sunshine. After that i "filled" the tank and Janne took some firewood if we later decide to stop and have a little salty snack we took off. We headed towards wind mills to take a GPS waypoint of route which has critical turning point just few hundred meters (~1/4mile) from cabin. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| We took a different route back to where we left the fishermen. We drove through a narrow passage which was all open, no wonder when i noticed how much strong the current was. Soon after open passage there were few people sitting beside a hole in the ice and trying to catch fish. We also noticed someone pushing her way over the ice with skates and cross-country ski sticks. She looked like she was really getting up the speed, but as she heard engine noise she just stopped and watched as we passed. Our speed was about 45km/h (28mph). Our path met the course we did at 2001-01-15 and saw couple more fishermen, which were dangerously close to open passage between islands we just crossed. Ice around the island where we saw an sea eagle last monday was now stronger and smooth, very smooth. At friday it had been a hard wind and it had blown all the snow away from the ice making it really smooth and slippery. No sea eagle this time but we did spot a flock of seagulls which kinda hinted where our friends could be found. They were just about ready to leave too and we took one of them onboard. They got just a one whitefish and a bunch of smaller fish. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Next stop was bay on our way back to hoverport. There were few net there that were to be checked. Few burbot for a soup and nothing much else. Janne and i drove of just few hundred meters to see the place where i drove propeller into some kind of wire. We found the place easily but neither of us didn't understand what was the function of this low hanging hazard. It didn't seem like guy rope as i initially it was, but it didn't look like electric or phone cable either. We drove further on to west and found open sea soon after couple of islands. Sea was really calm so we drove further out and decided to take a camcorder session. I left Janne to rocky beach and took few spins in calm water. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| It was time to get back and i throttled across the water
on to the ice and hit max. speed of 55km/h (34.2mph) before i had to slow
down. Others had already started to walk back and we picked them on our
way. There was still one mission to be done. For the first time on ice
we took the craft upstream the river to check-out
the ice thickness under nearest bridge. There was plenty of ice for
snowmobile with load of firewood in sled to drive under. We got back at
15:30PM
Total of 43,5km (27miles) was recorded by GPS today. Average speed was 25,7km/h (17mph). |
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| Clip #26 - Open water | Versions: | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Had to shoot at least some footage to show how magnificent the weather was. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Clip #27 - Picking up cameraman | Versions: | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Time to stop fooling around and pick up all the passengers we left. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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