LIMESTONE, Maine – A former Air Force base in Aroostook County has become one of the nation’s only racing venues for land sailing enthusiasts.
From May 7 to 12, land sailors will grace the airport runways at the former Loring Air Force Base for the fifth year. Land sailing, also known as land yachting or sand sailing, involves racers competing in small, three-wheeled carts with large sails attached for gaining speed.
Bill Buchholz, president of the Maine-based Chickawaukie Ice Boat Club, has organized land sailing at Loring since 2020 and helped make its airport the most northern venue for land sailing in the country.
Though land sailing is popular throughout the world, Loring is one of only a few U.S. venues, Buchholz said.
“The only other venues for land sailing are a beach in southern New Jersey, a parking lot in Rhode Island and a dry lake in Nevada,” Buchholz said.
Buchholz has taken part in ice boating, a similar sport that occurs on frozen winter lakes, for over 40 years. During the pandemic, Buchholz wanted to create a different type of event to bring his fellow racing enthusiasts together.
Buchholz has no personal connections to Loring but discovered the former base in his research. He found that many of the country’s former military bases have more business and industrial development, making their land not suitable for land sailing.
Loring’s over 12,000 square feet of runway space is currently not being used for businesses. That has made the venue ideal for land sailers hoping to gain top speeds, which typically get to over 40 miles per hour, Buchholz noted.
“I was overwhelmed by the size and how smooth the [airport runways’] asphalt was, considering how rundown the [Loring] base is,” Buchholz said.
The first Loring land sailing regatta races launched in fall 2020 and have returned every spring and fall since, Buchholz said. Events have drawn at least 25 racers, mostly from New England and northeast states like New York and New Jersey.
At Loring, racers will arrive Tuesday, May 7 for warm-up sailing and then continue with non-timed sailing the following day. Timed races will begin around 9:00 or 9:30 a.m. Thursday through Saturday.
Racers will begin inside the airport’s arch hangar and ride two and a half miles to the other end of the runway, where judges will record their speed and timing. They will compete in two divisions: the BloKart, using carts from the namesake New Zealand manufacturer and following International BloKart Racing Association rules; and the Unlimited division, which follows rules from the National Iceboat Authority.
“A lot depends on the wind,” Buchholz said. “With a light to moderate wind going in the right direction, you could get in some good speeds.”
Unlike other forms of racing, land sailing is usually not seen as a “spectator sport” because of the various locations that racers could end up in, but the Loring events will be free and open to the public, Buchholz noted.
Buchholz’s fellow Chickawaukie Club member and racer Joe Gervolino, a New Jersey resident, quickly became a land sailing enthusiast after racing his first event at Loring in 2020.
“It’s a very oddball sport and a lot of fun,” Gervolino said. “I’ve been involved with other races, and this is honestly the nicest group of people I’ve met.”
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