Ice Boats

  Building and sailing some ice sailboats with four students
    from SUTD during MIT's 2016 IAP.

Building an ice sailboat requires really precise construction, so blueprints like these are used as a base. The outer frame is bolted down to the table to avoid drift.

I have a decent number of pictures from the build process, but a lot of them aren't really well-suited to this view format, so you'll notice some jumps in progress.

There were good chunks of time waiting for glue to finish drying.

The entire time, we were guided along by the very-knowledgeable Bill Buchholz (seen here), as well as Professor John Brisson (wearing the blue jacket a few pictures down).

It's important that the skates are spaced equally apart to ensure the boat sails straight ahead.

If I remember correctly, these were pre-fabricated.

Loadin' em up for storage, to be picked back up and finished by other students in the following year(s).

*cue Barney cleanup song*

Sailing Day!

We drove up to a frozen lake in Maine for a fun day of sailing :)

As it turned out, we weren't nearly the only ones out there taking advantage of the lake!

Setting up the boats was a bit involved...

...but nothing that a little teamwork (and detailed instruction) couldn't get done!

Yours truly :)

Prof. Brisson next to one of the assembled boats.

Ice doggo!

Fun fact: being from Singapore, none of these lovely SUTD students had ever seen snow before, let alone been on a frozen lake!

If you look closely, you can see where the blades cut paths into the ice.

Gettin' ready to set sail!

I won't lie: I have no idea what compelled them to carve a lobster into the ice...

...but they did a great job and were very proud of it :)

The evening light was really beautiful.

Some people were trying their luck at ice fishing with this tip up rig.

Thus ended a fun little winter adventure!

Bonus content: this is one of the boats we worked on, which was completed later on.