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Another reason that racing and getting together is popular with ice yachters has to do with a less exciting, but very important facet of the sport. Ice, even in the best of conditions, can be unpredictable: It flexes, cracks and breaks; it bulges up in areas and sometimes it doesn’t freeze as solid in some areas as others. This means that there is always a risk of going through the ice or crashing. Ice yachters are very much aware of this and most take safety very seriously. There truly is safety in numbers for ice yachters because they keep an eye out for each other, and keep tabs on the last time they saw someone.
No matter how many ice yachters are on the ice, and how hard they try to keep an eye out for each other, bad things can still happen. Dave Fortier’s brother, the person who introduced him to ice yachting, once went through unnoticed during a gathering. "He went through the ice and he spent two hours on top of his boat waiting for us to find him. I started looking for him not five minutes after he went through." Fortier’s brother later told him that while they were searching for him, they had sailed past him a couple of times. No one knew for sure where he had gone through, and his mast was not upright while the boat was in the water. This made it difficult to see him on the expanses of the ice.
 Most ice yachters carry on their person a claw-like device that has a rectangular shape. If the ice yacht goes into the water, they break this device apart into to two L-shaped pieces that have spikes protruding from one end of each L. In the event that an ice yachter finds himself in the water, these claws are grasped with each hand to provide grip on the ice so that he can pull himself out of the water. Without this claw-like devise, it is nearly impossible to get sufficient grip on the flat slippery ice with numb, cold and bare hands. An ice yachter stuck in the water faces hypothermia and death if no one else sees him go in. Dave Fortier has had the unfortunate experience of going through the ice, and he says that being calm is paramount. "I’ve gone in places where the ice has cracked as I tried to get out. You’ve just got to keep your head; just don’t panic. I’ve thought ‘I’ve got to get out this try.’ You can’t flail, you’ve got to be cool."
Weather conditions also occupy the minds of ice yachters because these will, in part, determine how much enjoyment they will get from their day or weekend on the ice. The amount of wind, the temperature and ice conditions all have a direct effect upon what kinds of things they will be able to do with their ice yachts. If any of these conditions become too extreme, it can mean a wasted trip or no trip at all. Eben Whitcomb says that for those who like ice yachting, this is part of the attraction. " The sport combines so many things, that’s what makes it fun for the guys that do it and why we stick with it. It’s a fickle sport: It demands a convergence of conditions that are pretty narrow. You have to have ice and it has to be reasonably clear. You have to have wind, but not too much wind; and it has to be cold, but not too cold. That has to happen largely on a weekend when everybody can get there to have a race."
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