"Infinity": Homemade Iceboat

I came across the discarded Infinity excercise machine laying next to a dumpster, parts all ajumble. The owner had disassembled it and tossed it in the dumpster, hoping to sneak it past the watchful eyes of our vigilant Juneau refuse pickup crew. The ploy hadn't worked, and the garbage crew had tossed the steel parts out on the sidewalk.

A cold snap had just hit Juneau and the rare black ice was quickly thickening. It would be usable in a day or two and with our weather, would not last long. It slowly dawned on me that I could be looking at a dandy iceboat frame, right there in the junkpile. That hunch proved correct. The parts needed to be totally re-arranged, but there were many helpful appendages in the right places, like the welded-on 5/8 studs on the end of the arms to receive the skate shoes, and 2" square tubing that neatly received the heel of a Bolger Teal mast, borrowed from a friend.

There was a fair amount of excitement and anticipation as Mark Zeiger rigged the snotter for his Teal's mast and sail, and Thomas James can't wait to pop in the helmsman's seat..

With a push from Greg Chaney they're off!!!

Thomas goes zooming off in to the darkness

All in all the project was a grand success. Nothing broke on the trial run!!! (couple close calls of course). Zero money spent on this project - all scrounged materials. Well somebody had paid a couple bucks for some old skates I think, but that was it. Lateral resistance could be improved by longer, flatter, sharper skate blades, but this worked OK. And the steering needs upgrading, but for the few minutes spent on it, it was well worth it.

With the elegant looking hardware and paint job, we successfully deceived at least one bystander into thinking this was an expensive factory built rig... having spent $0.00 on this project, that comment as much as anything else really made my day!!