UPCOMING:
It’s Swap Meet Season!
4LIYC Meeting : November 5, 2025 via Zoom More information.
Midwest Hardwater Sailors Swap Meet: November 8, 2025 @ Delavan Yacht Club More Information
4LIYC Shipstore: Order custom iceboat shirts, hats, and gear. More information.
BURGEE: Order your 4LIYC Burgee
Pay Your Dues Online
4LIYC Meetings Join the Virtual Revolution
The Four Lakes Ice Yacht Club is pleased to announce that our meetings for the upcoming season will continue through the Zoom app. Club officers believe it is critical to maintain our meeting schedule in order to keep our members informed about ice conditions, regattas, and fleet news. Currently, in Dane County, restaurants and bars have a 25% capacity limit which makes holding our club meetings next to impossible. Even though we can’t meet indoors, club members are excited and looking forward to the upcoming ice sailing season. Ice sailing is the perfect way to continue socializing and having fun outdoors. Club meetings could move back indoors if the COVID situation changes.
4LIYC club members will receive an email next week with more information about the Zoom meetings. If you have questions, please email debwhitehorse@iceboat.org.
2020-2021 4LIYC ZOOM MEETING DATES
November 4POSTPONED- November 18 FIRST MEETING
- December 2 Elect Fleet Captains. Vote on ISA & NIYA Agenda Items
- December 16
- December 30
- January 13 Honor Roll Nominations
- January 27 Deadline for By-Law or Racing Rules Amendment Submission
- February 10
- February 24 Business Meeting
- March 10
Location: Online using the Zoom App
Time: 6:30 PM
NSHOF Virtual Induction Ceremony
If you missed it last Saturday night, the National Sailing Hall of Fame has kindly made available the induction ceremony on YouTube. The embedded video begins with Peter Harken’s introduction of Bill Mattison. You’ll see many familiar faces in the photos and hear from Bill’s wife, Mauretta, a driving force supporting Bill’s passions for the water and boat shop.
Socially Iceboating
One of the tenets of this sport is adaptability – being ready for whatever Mother Nature throws our way. 4LIYC Nite sailor Lars Barber has been planning for the season like any good ice sailor and created this portable propane grill for some after-race cookouts. In normal times, a cookout on the ice is a treat. With COVID likely limiting our access to the local watering spots, a fire on the ice with brats, bags of shelled peanuts (Tip of the Helmet Tom Hyslop), and our favorite beverages will almost become mandatory. So take a few extra minutes to plan when heading to the lake. Throw a bag of pre-cooked brats, snacks, and garbage bags into the cooler. Iceboating will get you out of the house this winter.
Shop Day: Plank and Fire-pit
Paul Krueger and Ken Whitehorse were back in the Skeeter Shop on Saturday preparing for the upcoming season. Paul focused on the runner plank while Ken welded up a portable fire pit. Is there room in the trailer for a portable fire-pit? A fire on the ice at the end of a sailing day could be the answer to the social-time dilemma that COVID has presented.
“Millennium Factor”
“Millenium Factor”
For our final installment of Bill Mattison Week, we go back to the 1992 Harken catalog where another National Sailing Hall of Famer, Peter Harken, talks about Bill, Paul Krueger, winning the Ice Yacht Challenge Pennant, and building MILLENIUM FACTOR QUATRO in the Willy St. Boat Shop.
In normal times, the 4LIYC would have thrown a party for tonight’s National Sailing Hall of Fame induction ceremony. There will be much to celebrate when we can gather off-ice again including Bill’s induction and Greg Whitehorse’s 4LIYC Honor Roll induction. In the meantime, follow Bill’s example and get busy in the shop making dust and preparing equipment for the upcoming season.

Previous: Bill’s Circus Life
“The Icing On The Lake”
“Fast Forward Since Birth”
“The Hard-Water Gang” with Bill Mattison at the 2001 ISA
Shooting the Breeze with Bill Mattison
Bill Mattison Inducted into the National Sailing Hall of Fame
Iceboaters Fingerprints
Bill’s Life Is A Circus

Bill demonstrates his working steam calliope at the closing party for the Willy Street Boat Shop in 2008. Don Sanford in the background.
Today’s Bill Mattison Week installment takes a quick jibe from ice sailing over to Bill’s other passion, circus modeling. Barb Sanford’s 2017 article for Wisconsin Academy publication “traces his obsession for detail and passion for the circus”. And yes, Bill did run away with the circus as a kid. Read the article here.
Previous: “The Icing On The Lake”
“Fast Forward Since Birth”
“The Hard-Water Gang” with Bill Mattison at the 2001 ISA
Shooting the Breeze with Bill Mattison
Bill Mattison Inducted into the National Sailing Hall of Fame
Iceboaters Fingerprints

Southern WI Iceboat Swap Meet Nov 7 @ Delavan YC
Bob Rast reports on the 4LIYC Facebook page that another iceboat swap meet has been organized at the Delavan Yacht Club.
Southern Wisconsin Iceboat Swap Meet
Date: Saturday, November 7, 2020
Time: 10 AM – 3 PM
Location: Delavan Yacht Club
1501 Cedar Point Drive
Delavan, WI
Map
UPDATE: 12 September: Via Susie Pegel:
There won’t be a raffle.
North Shore Drive (Delavan Lake) under reconstruction starting Sept. 17,
including closing of bridge over the Outlet.
So to get to the Delavan Lake Yacht Club:
Go west on Hwy 50 into the city of Delavan to intersection with Borg Road
(Walgreens and Wendy’s on corner)
Go south on Borg Road to intersection with North Shore Drive
Go east on North Shore Drive until Cedar Point Drive and then down hill to
Delavan Lake Yacht Club
If you see Rustic Pub and Delavan Lake Store you have gone too far
“The Icing On The Lake”: More Wisdom From the Shop

“The second you think you’ve got it all figured out, somebody’s going to knock the socks right off you,” Mattison says.
“The Icing On The Lake”
Welcome to Day 4 of Bill Mattison Week at iceboat.org. Today’s feature article written by the late David Medaris ran in Madison’s local paper Isthmus in 1988 when Bill had just finished HONEYBUCKET VIII. Bill explained how he built Skeeter iceboats “to the average” and talked about his roots in Madison. Click here to read.
Previous:“Fast Forward Since Birth”
“The Hard-Water Gang” with Bill Mattison at the 2001 ISA
Shooting the Breeze with Bill Mattison
Bill Mattison Inducted into the National Sailing Hall of Fame
Iceboaters Fingerprints
Mendota Today Live Webcam
Mendota Today Live View
Lake Mendota has 2 new live webcams situated between the Edgewater and the UW Union. The cameras are pointed west and north. Many thanks to those responsible for these high-quality views. These cameras will get plenty of looks from the ice sailing community for Mendota ice checks and iceboat watching. There’s even a Youtube channel for their “greatest hits”.
Tip of the Helmet: Grant Frautschi
DN Tech Talk: Shimming Runners
When ice sailors, whether they own a Nite, DN, Skeeter, Renegade, Stern Steer, etc. get together, a compulsory topic of conversation is runners – how to sharpen and align them. Polish DNer Tomek Zakrzewski’s video breaks down DN shimming.






