Steve Arnold: Celebration of Life June 29

Download Steve Arnold Celebration Of Life flyer.

UPDATE: Please make your reservation with Don Sanford by Wednesday, June 12!
Please join family and friends celebrating Steve Arnold
Saturday, June 29 from 1:00 – 4:00 p.m.

Steve campaigned his Nite, Nite Nite and his A-Skeeter, Intrepid all around Wisconsin, the Midwest, Canada and New Jersey during the late 1970s and early 80s. He passed away unexpectedly in November 2018.

We will gather at:
Wisconsin Aviation, Dane County Regional Airport
3606 Corben Ct.
Madison, WI 53704
(608) 268-5000
• Buck and Honey’s will cater hot and cold appetizers, beer, wine and soft drinks.
• Share stories and photos from Steve’s wide circle of iceboating and flying friends and family
• Share in a special “Gone West” toast from the Quiet Birdmen – an aviation organization that Steve supported for over 25 years. RSVP by June 15, 2019

Because we’re holding this celebration in an airport hangar, security requires a firm list of all registered guests prior to the event. Please send your name and the names of all guests in your party, along with your phone number and e-mail address to: Don Sanford
dpsanford@charter.net by June 15, 2019

“Building In The Big City”: A C-Skeeter Rises

Pre-Glue Test Fit

Daniel Hearn elevates his C-Skeeter build.
Previously:
“New Ways to Shave”
“Heavy Metal Lightweight”
“It’s a Bubble”
“Simon Says”
“Frosting For Frozen Fun”
“When Your Plank Needs Work”
“A Weak Moment”

Building in the Big City

I’m going to need new business cards, After completing my pre-glue test fit, I realized I’m not just a “Builder” anymore. I’ve gone vertical, so I must be a “Developer.” My basement projects have consumed all the available horizontal space. Anything more and you might see me featured on an episode of “Hoarders.” Is anyone else amazed at the kind of crap people will watch on TV? Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not exactly what you’d call “highbrow.” My wife has been training the Oconomowoc hillbilly out of me for 35 years, with limited success. But come on, “Moonshiners!?” When subtitles are necessary to understand a show’s characters who are speaking something that resembles English, that might be a good indication of a waste of time.

Back to development. As is typical with construction projects, my staging was a bit off. An unforeseen problem with my Sitka supply chain left me one board short. Not wanting to idle my high-priced labor and delay progress, I charged ahead with the available materials. Fast forward to today, and I’ve got a mostly completed frame, but nowhere to glue up my second side board. Hmm…what would a Developer do? Yes, that’s it, bring in the crane and scrape the sky!

At this point in my build, my mechanical equipment was collecting dust, so why not put it to use? With my Harken powered crane in place, I hoisted my frame out of the way and created the space I needed to glue up my second sideboard. Whoa…and when I cut her loose from the oppressive chains of the building table, if she didn’t go into an immediate hike, like she was rounding the top mark in a blow! This frozen filly may be a hard one to tame.
Daniel Hearn

Big City Building

Lowell North

Class A Skeeters with North Sails (created by Henry Bossett at the North Sails New Jersey loft) line up at the 2010 Northwest Regatta on Lake Winnebago. Photo: Joe Terry

Lowell North, one of the most influential men in sailing passed on June 2nd. That brought to mind something that has become iconic for me, Joe Terry’s photo of a perfect line up of Skeeters, all with the big blue North sail logos. Lowell North had a strong Wisconsin connection in Madison native, Peter Barrett, who won an Olympic medal with Lowell and “founded the second North Sails loft (Seal Beach, CA) before moving home to Pewaukee, WI to start North Sails Midwest, the first North loft outside California.”

There’s been a long tradition of ice sailors who have worked with North Sails. You’ll find some of that history in 4LIYC Nite sailor, Don Sanford’s story about the life of Peter Barrett.

Peter Barrett: A Life Under Sail by Don Sanford

In 1964, Lowell North hired Peter to manage North’s second sail loft in Costa Mesa, California. Peter and his family moved to California in the summer of 1965. Peter would work at North Sails for the next 21 years. Five years later, in 1969, he and his family moved to Pewaukee to manage the new North Sails Midwest loft. Together with his old UW sailing buddies Charlie Miller, Art Mitchell, and Peter and Olaf Harken, they operated North Sails Midwest, Harken Yacht Fittings and Vanguard Sailboats from the basement of an old bottling plant in Waukesha. They all lived on Pewaukee Lake, raced Finns and were members of the Pewaukee Yacht Club.

Williams Bay Centennial Celebrates Ice Sailing

Skeeter Ice Boat Club ice sailor Jane Wiswell Pegel.

Via Susie Pegel:

Williams Bay, Wisconsin (“Iceboat Center of the World”) is celebrating its Centennial in 2019. It has been 100 years since being incorporated as a village. Four booklets are now on display at the Barrett Memorial Library in Williams Bay:
1)”Iceboating and the Skeeter Ice Boat Club”
2)”Jane Pegel—Iceboat Champion”
3)”The Williams Bay Sailing Club”
4) “Dr. Clifford Y. Wiswell—Town Doctor”

A series of special events will be taking place during the year culminating on October 19 with the big blowout celebration including food, beverages, entertainment, bike parade and more!!

Steve Arnold Photos: The Biggest of Planks

Bill Mattison builds the DEUCE runner plank c. 1980, from the Steve Arnold collection

Previous:
Vintage ’80s

Bill Mattison with help from 4LIYC members built a new runner plank for the World’s Largest Iceboat©, the DEUCE, in the early 1980s in his Williamson St. shop. Luckily, we have photos that the late Steve Arnold took during that build. Twenty some years later, Bill supervised the lofting and building of DEUCE’s hull at Rick Hennig’s Cabbage Patch shop in Racine which culminated in a glue-party that attracted iceboaters from all over the Midwest who wanted to take part in that historic occasion. (Photos and stories documenting that build here.) I can’t think of a better time to repost Dave Elsmo’s classic video about the DEUCE, “54 Foot of Fast”, embedded below.

“New Ways to Shave” a C Skeeter Plank

Final shape edge checks

Daniel Hearn shares another installment on his C Skeeter build proving again that iceboating attracts creative types!
Previously:
“Heavy Metal Lightweight”
“It’s a Bubble”
“Simon Says”
“Frosting For Frozen Fun”
“When Your Plank Needs Work”
“A Weak Moment”

New Ways to Shave

I’ve been receiving AARP mailings now for 8 years. To add to the insult, it started before I even officially hit the big 5-0. It’s a mystery how they even found me. When we were hunting Bin Laden, we should have put them on the case. If you were born before seat belts were required, they know where you are.

As we get older maybe we do get stuck in our ways. I’ve been shaving the same way for decades. Good News Plus razors with the lubrication strip and the cheapest cream on the shelf. Two blades were always good enough for me, and as far as I was concerned, any white cream would do the job. But shampoo? Nothing but the best for me. Not for what the fancy fluids do for my locks, though I’m sure you’ve noticed the sheen, bounce and manageability. But because when my daughters were all home, they would move on to the next miracle liquid before the last one was gone. I may have a lifetime supply of wounded soldiers. And I smell like a sorority house.

Before Amazon, my wife picked up my shaving supplies at an actual store. Now they’re delivered to my door with a single click. Making it easy has made Jeff Bezos 158.1 billion. But now Harry’s has made it even easier. And better. I don’t even have to click. Not one time. The blades just show up when I need them. They’re probably using a top secret algorithm to calculate the precise speed of my facial hair growth and the corresponding life span of each blade, based the Rockwell rating of my whiskers and my shaving frequency. I may be on the cutting edge of shaving (I’m slightly embarrassed about that pun), but I’m at the dull center of fashion. I still wear socks with my dress shoes. And see no need to sport pants so short that my ankles show. Who decided “floods” were a “look?” Plus, MY suit jackets actually fit ME. When did it become fashionable to look like the “oops” of a Catholic family–the boy who was last in line to wear the First Communion suit, when he was much taller than his older brothers at the same age.

The razors from Harry’s have like 17 blades and they stay sharp for a long time. MBAs who want to sound smart would call this a “core competency.” Me, well, my MBA is a Mop Bucket Attitude, so I’m thinking they should get into runners. Perfectly profiled and optimally sharp (or dull) for the upcoming conditions, delivered right to my door the day before the regatta is even called “ON”. This may be the next move for Amazon. I’d better call a patent attorney to protect my “intellectual property.” When you charge $900/hr., you have to use expensive words. Translation for those of you with an MBA like mine—my “good idea.” If I don’t, Amazon, Google or Apple will most certainly steal my good idea. And I think they’ve got enough money.

All the DN planks I’ve built were “close enough” planks. I’d bend them up following all the conventional wisdom, then start eyeball hand-planing until I thought they looked cool. Then I’d add glass in search of deflection that would match what the fast guys said would be calibrated to my weight, and called it good. But with my C-Skeeter project, I thought I needed to break from my old ways. So, the first thing I did was look up NACA foils. I don’t even know what that stands for, but I stumbled upon the section with foil shapes that were neither lifty or draggy. (These are highly technical terms beyond the scope of this recap). I sized one to the width of my plank, built a router jig to create shape reference cuts, estimated the declining depth of my cuts to account for the ½” tapering of the plank from inboard to outboard, then made lots of sawdust. Not as precise as a CNC router, but a sophisticated shave for me!