Published 9/26/2003 When visiting the Ice sailing team in Vilnius I saw an old Ice Optimist at the Yacht Club in Trakai. (see picture below) Vadimas Grigonis found out the history about it.

The hull was made in 1988. Romualdas Karpovichius, who was a trainer in Vilnius Yacht Club, made 5 such Ice optimist hulls in 1988. He took the drawings from popular Russian magazine "Katera I Jachty" http://www.katera.ru/ In this magazine No.81 (1979) there was an article called "Bujer s parusom ot "O" ("iceboat with sail from "O" ), written by Vysheslavskij D.A.

There was an enthusiastic coach - Tomas Ramanauskas - working in yacht club in those times and he promoted the idea to make Ice optimists.

Hans Adolfsson
research: Vadimas Grigonis
photo: Ros Scully