Bob and Jane took meticulous care of their iceboats. Bob’s Skeeter, FROZEN ASSETS, had different color schemes which is unusual in my opinion because up here at Four Lakes, the most of the Skeeters in that era were red and white, period. Jane writes about Bob’s boats:
Bob had many different boats. Each boat had a different paint scheme. I don’t recall the sequence or how many boats there were. He had conventional under the boom cockpits and also rumble seaters. Originally Bob’s number was I-117. The number 9 had been assigned to Cora Millenbach and she gave 9 to Bob and he then had I-9 on his Skeeters and then also on his Renegades. After he got tired of the color blue, he had green boats. Bob raced in A Division and also in C Division (which was a varnished boat with a white deck). He won C division ISA and also Class E in the Northwest. The brown skeeter with sail I-117 was actually the boat with white sides and dark blue deck. The hull broke in half and was rebuilt. It was rebuilt and back on the ice and rigged to sail before it could be repainted. I have a photo of that boat under sail hanging in my hallway. In that photo It it obvious the hull is getting ready to break.
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Jane Wiswell Pegel of the Skeeter Ice Boat Club with trophies.
Several months ago, an envelope arrived in the mail with 177 slides. I finally got around to converting them and am pleased to announce that iceboat.org’s off-season series will feature the Pegel family iceboating slides. I’ll try to post a few each week with commentary and context from Jane and Susie as their schedule permits.
I don’t have any information from them yet on these photos, but will update if it comes. Before she was a DN sailor, Jane sailed a Skeeter, CALAMITY JANE. In the above photo, Jane holds a plaque that appears to read “Women’s Skeeter Champion.” ISA regatta records indicate that Jane won the Women’s Championship in 1955, 1956, and 1957.
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Lake Winnebago Stern-Steerer sailor, Dave Lallier, posted this eye catching photo on the 4LIYC Facebook page this morning.
A little research indicates that TRUDLE II was owned by Ernst von Lengerke of New Jersey who served as Commodore of the Musconetcong Ice Yacht Club. He received credit in Frederic Gardiner’s book, “Wings on Ice”, as an invaluable source of information about the sport. The boat is also mentioned in a 1940 New Jersey Register article about a successful iceboat regatta held at Red Banks. If you want to dig deeper, one of the Google search results led me back to this website in the form of an article written in 1947 by Ray Ruge that references TRUDLE III. UPDATE April 18, 2018: Nels Lybeck posts the following on Facebook: “The Trudle III is currently in the care and hands of myself and Doug MacFarland (ex DN US 2500) here in Red Bank and has been restored with a new sail to fit her Duralum (before aluminum) Marconi rig. We received it from Ernst Von Lengerke’s daughter before she died a few years ago.”
Bill Bucholz shared this video on the Chickawaukee, Maine Iceboat Club website. The ice sailing season appears to be holding on in Lac St. Francois, in Lambton, Quebec where they sailed on Sunday, April 15. The weekend snow storm makes the world feel upside down – as if it’s December and we are waiting for first sailing reports. Here in Madison this morning, there’s 4″ of snow on the ground, it’s 24 F, and it’s snowing. Mike Madge reports 4′ of ice in Thunder Bay, Ontario. There could be some more ice sailing to come.
If you need something to do while you are cooped up this weekend because of yet another snow storm, peruse these wonderful photos by Jacek Kwiatkowski from this year’s Lake Baikal DN and Ice Optimist regattas.
