Wing ice yacht, 8-meter class, Strelna y/c, Saint-Petersburg, Russia.
After two crashes in 2013 and 2014, legendary wing booier “Wing of Communism” is again on ice!
Why “Wing of Communism”? Nothing to do with politics! This name was given because a lot of people contributed to it’s rebirth.
Project of this ice yacht was made by A. Lebedev in 70-80 yy. In 1980th After the dssolution of the Soviet Union yachting in Russia fell into decay. A lot of yacht clubs ceased to exist. A lot of boats fell into disrepair, were destroyed or even burned due to bureaucratic problems – it was easier to write off the balance sheet and destroy a yacht, than to transfer the ownership to the private person! Thus, in St. Petersburg were destroyed countless dinghies and cruising yachts. In the early 90’s was a time when in a few years had been savagely burned about 50 yachts “dragon”! This fate is not passed and ice yachts. Were destroyed a lot of monotypes, DN. Ice yachts S-8 , including all wing booiers S-8B, S-12, became extinct as a class. Several fuselages of S-8 and a pair of wings S-8B were saved by enthusiastic yachtsmen on their own funds (thanks to Igor V. Dorozhkin, Pavel M. Karyakin, Gennady Leontiev, Dmitriy Borodin et al.), and about 20 years were lying in warehouses in several yacht clubs. In the 2000s, some S-8 ice yachts were restored. In 2012, the “S-8 free class ice yacht association” was established, active revival of the S-8 class began. At the moment, ice yacht fleet of S-8 has 18 boats in St. Petersburg, one in Finland and one in Estonia.
Wing booier S-8 “Wing of Communism” as a symbol of rebirth of the S-8 class was restored collectively by the members of the S-8 Association, yachtsmen from Strelna Sailing Club and the SPb Central Yacht Club: Dmitry Borodin, Dmitry Elets, Vadim Pikin, Yevgeny Sharov, Alexei Stupichev, Nikita Brilliantov, Yakov Knyazkov, Alexander Bubnov, Andrew Arsent’ev, Kirill Smirnov, Vladimir Zadirienko and many other people. By means of these people and our friends the wing ice boat was rebuilt three times.
For the first time in 2013 – after 20 years of storage. The wing was re-covered by aircraft cloth, the rotten wood in the fuselage was replaced , rigging was made. During the first ride helmsman forgot to mount the bolt that prevents the wing spindle falling out. Due to vibrations wing popped out of its holder and fell, totally destroying nose of the ice yacht.
In 2014, ice boat was restored by the same people, but after a couple of weeks it was killed by the hurricane, while standing at moorage at night. On the wing iceboats at moorage wing is not removed, but is free to rotate in all directions, while ice yacht is rigidly fixed to the harbour boom, or stationary piles driven into the ice. However, the power of that hurricane was too large, there were no stationary mounts strong enough, booier had capsized, and it’s hull was breaked down into parts.
For the third time, and again by common efforts of different people (justifying its name), the wing ice boat “Wing of Communism” was restored in early 2015. February 23, 2015 the wing ice boat for the first time after 25 years of neglect took part in the race and won 3rd place!