by Deb Whitehorse | Jan 24, 2021 | 2020-2021, Home Page
Well bugger them, these Aussies are thinking about iceboating as they watch the ongoing America’s Cup. They dialed up Steve Orlebeke for a podcast episode about inland sailing and iceboating. “Bar Karate is a new sailing podcast. You might learn nothing, but you will have fun doing it.” Listen here.
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by Deb Whitehorse | Jan 23, 2021 | 2020-2021, Home Page

Well you have to figure that since Paul and Ken had their boats set up on Lake Mendota, they’d be obligated to give sailing a try. Paul reports that he “got a little ride, and the snow was too sticky to make it around a racecourse.” Ken said, “The snow was only an inch, yet the razor-sharp quarter-inch runners couldn’t cut through it. Paul got a ride with his draft sail. A special Kau- Bossett design. I pushed back to the pits. Thumbs up to the race committee for canceling racing this weekend; they knew more than the skeeters fleet!”

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by Deb Whitehorse | Jan 23, 2021 | 2020-2021, Home Page, WSSA
Here’s the last “missing” installment from this series of videos. In this video, you’ll see how to wrangle a stern-steerer through the open water at the shoreline, typical of spring ice sailing.
Many thanks to 4LIYC Nite sailor Don Sanford for taking the time to find the nuggets in old movie footage and editing them into something worth watching.
Previous: Big Boats on Geneva Part 1.
Big Boats on Geneva Part 3
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by Deb Whitehorse | Jan 22, 2021 | Home Page

There is no 4LIYC racing scheduled for January 23-24, 2021. 4LIYC Commodore Don Anderson and Jeff Russell checked ice on Mendota today and found “unpassable” snow drifts on top of 5-6″ of good, hard ice. The next 4LIYC racing update will be Friday, January 29, 2021, by 5 PM.
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by Deb Whitehorse | Jan 22, 2021 | Home Page, WSSA

An example of a lateen rigged stern-steerer with an A-frame style mast.
Wisconsin Stern-Steerer Association Secretary Andy Gratton passed along this story from Steve Maniaci of Michigan about Little Bay de Noc and a stern-steerer with an unusual mast.
That capsizing photo (see “Who Did It Better?“) brings back memories on Little Bay de Noc, back in January of ‘69. My girlfriend and I were in my dad’s four-place stern steerer, going east and west along the leeward south shore of Gladstone’s waterfront with a strong north wind. Things were going well until I went beyond the power plant point and caught the full broadside blast of wind coming unimpeded from Rapid River.
We went up and over in a heartbeat. Thankfully, my girlfriend was wearing an insulated snowmobile suit that cushioned the blow. I was never so thankful for my old motorcycle helmet as that day.
I don’t know what the technical name is for that type of mast. We just called it a wishbone mast. The two parts of the wishbone were anchored to a metal bracket on the cross plank and were quite a ways out towards the runners. They came together with a metal bracket that held a large pulley for the mainsail halyard. The masts leaned forward and were held in place by two metal bars anchored to the nose bracket that also anchored the guy cables to the plank to the nose.
My dad bought it in the mid-’60s from Atley Peterson, an old Swede from Escanaba. Atley and his family built it, and he said they had clocked it at 90 mph back in the ’40s. The solid wood beam that makes up the body that everything attaches to has weakened with age and is no longer safe. The last time I sailed, it was on Little Traverse Bay in the late ’80s.
Iceboating is exciting and exhilarating, but it is so loud. I much prefer sailing my Boston Whaler Harpoon 5.
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by Deb Whitehorse | Jan 21, 2021 | Home Page

Ken Whitehorse and Paul Krueger took advantage of the sunny day and set up their Class A Skeeters on the west end of Lake Mendota today, January 21, 2021. The boats stayed close to shore because there’s not quite enough ice thickness for them to sail. Stand by for Friday’s ice report.
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