DN ICE SAILING

The class

DN sailors often joke that this must be the world's least crowd-friendly sport. It's cold, windy, wet and desolate. We are looking for large areas of ice and these are not found where other people are. This is also part of the allure.

When you arrive at an ice hunting competition for the first time, you are struck by how dressed up the participants look. In the pit, the sailors wear thick overalls to keep the cold at bay. Under the overalls, you often have a thin speed overall that is exposed just before the start. Another thing that strikes you is the large age range of the sailors. At the starting line you will find sixty year olds standing side by side with twenty year olds, Experience counts. If you are not so fast at running at the start, you can make up for this with superior tactical sailing.

Often when you talk about ice hunting sailing to the uninitiated, you hear the comment: - Ice hunting sailing, it seems like fun, but it's only every five years you can sail, right?" This does not match reality at all. In a normal winter, it is possible to sail basically every day from December to March within a radius of 10 miles from the capital. In other words, accessibility is considerably better than for other winter sports, for example slalom or cross-country skiing. Many times you leave the big city in pouring rain at dawn only to race a few hours later on sparkling white ice on Lake Mälaren, for example. However, not all participants are Swedish, but many Danes, Germans and Dutch frequent Swedish ices when there is a shortage of ice on their home ground.

The competitions

The WC is limited to 220 ice yachts from about 20 nations. The WC takes place every year, alternately in North America and Europe. In Sweden, eight national ranking competitions plus SM are arranged every year and collect in rounds 20-60 hunts per event, depending on the ice conditions in both Sweden and Europe.

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