Regatta Watch: ISA & NIYA Postponed

Photo: Chris John    Sailing legend Buddy Melges takes a first place finish in his Skeeter at the 2007 Northwest sailed on Green Bay in Menominee, Michigan

The International Skeeter Association (ISA) and Northwest Regattas are postponed because all of Wisconsin and Michigan are snow covered. Next update for both regattas is Sunday, February 18.

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Regatta Watch: NIYA & ISA Postponed

DEUCE at the 2004 Northwest on Lake Monona, Madison, WI. Photo: David Travis

The International Skeeter Association (ISA) and Northwest Regattas are postponed because all of Wisconsin and Michigan are snow covered. Next update for both regattas is Sunday, February 11.

 

Northwest Regatta Called ON for Jan 26-28

Photo: Joe Stanton

Via NIYA Race Committee Chairman Tim McCormick

“The Northwest Regatta is tentatively call ON for January 26-28. The primary site is Lake Winnebago and we’re holding Madison and Green Bay as backup sites. Final confirmation will be made by Wednesday, January 24th at Noon CST.”

A New First

PIKE an early Skeeter iceboat owned by the Goes Family

From the Skeeter Iceboat Club on Geneva Lake, Jane Pegel sends this photo with a note:

Here is a photo of Chris Goes sailing January 12, 2018, on Delavan Lake in the Beau Skeeter “Pike”. This boat has been owned and given loving care by the Goes family since 1935. With Harry Melges, Sr. at the helm, “Pike” won the Northwest in 1935, the first year that Class E Skeeters raced in the regatta as a separate fleet. This is what the boats looked like when the Beau Skeeter Ice Boat Club (now the Skeeter Ice Boat Club) was organized in 1933.

Jane’s information puts the Skeeters in the Northwest one year earlier than records had indicated, a date confirmed by this Oshkosh Northwestern newspaper article from 2-28-1935. That’s not the end of the story because it appears the Skeeters first sailed the Northwest in 1933 at Oshkosh but that regatta was cancelled for reasons likely related to weather. The Northwest regatta officials must have embraced the new Skeeter class the same year it was organized at Lake Geneva.
Related: Northwest Regatta Winners

Wisconsin State Journal, Feb 23, 1933. The “mosquito class” is now known as the Skeeter class.