But I was clever enough to have a second watch on, which I started to record how much longer I was out there.
This was sort of the fulfillment of a dream I've had for over 40 years: the iceboats were there. I initially was not going to skate, because the lake was covered with snow, but there were some people playing informal hockey, and I saw a sail, and there were clearly folks ice fishing, so I decided to give it a go. Turned out the snow was only about two flakes deep, enough to hide things but not enough to impede skating at all. The iceboaters warned that there were thin spots (yesterday one broke through, which doesn't mean that the sailor gets wet, but the craft suddenly slams to a halt, potentially from high speed, and I guess the guy got thrown out and got pretty badly hurt), so they were wary about venturing very far out onto the lake, but I did a tour of the eastern half, stopping to chat briefly with ice fishermen who all reported thicknesses of 6"-9". There could very well have still been thin spots, though. The warm rain mid-week also smoothed this lake out nicely, and the surface was great, even better than yesterday. After my tour, I hung out with the iceboaters, and the time includes some time (maybe 5-10 minutes) of standing still chatting with them while they were becalmed. There wasn't enough breeze for them to really get going, though they were able to sail intermittently. I really wanted to see them moving fast enough that I couldn't keep up, but that never happened. Still pretty cool skating alongside them.
They're parked and empty in this picture, the sailors were off marking cracks in the ice while they waited for the breeze to pick up.