That Time When A Car Raced Iceboats On Lake Monona

by | Nov 1, 2019 | 2019-2020, Home Page

A Warren-Detroit automobile and Carl Bernard’s YELLOW KID stern-steerer. YELLOW KID was one of the 10 stern-steerers on the racing program for that day.

The Four Lakes area received another 5″ of snow yesterday making October 2019 the snowiest on record at 8.1 inches. I researched the previous years with snowy Octobers with the hope of finding a correlation between October snow and early ice sailing. There wasn’t enough data, but during the search, I stumbled across this 1916 newspaper article about a race between a “6 cylinder Warren Detroit auto” owned by Walter Haspell and 10 Madison stern-steerers on Lake Monona. The article notes that Mr. Haspell, an avid ice sailor himself, had previously “pitted his automobile…against the ice yachts but the found the course too slippery”. No word whether the race was run or who won.  Click on the newspaper clipping to enlarge it.

Of course you can’t have a post about automobiles vs. iceboats without this classic film from Lake St. Clair, posted below.

On Twinbeds

by | Aug 21, 2019 | 2019-2020, Home Page, WSSA

TWINBEDS on Lake Kegonsa at the 2002 Northwest Regatta

The McCormick family, long time members of the 4LIYC, have owned TWINBEDS, a Class C Stern Steerer, since 1949 when 19 year old Bill McCormick purchased the boat from Charlie Bleck who lived in Monona, WI. Peter McCormick, who takes her tiller these days, has been on a quest to learn more about the history of the boat. Charlie Bleck purchased the boat from Phil Berdner, an Oshkosh Ice Yacht Club member and owner of a marina. When Chuck bought the boat it had a spare mast that was 4-5 ft taller than the sail. Chuck replaced the mast with a shorter one.

TWINBEDS was built here in Madison by Carl Bernard in the Hudson River style instead of the Madison style- which means she was built after 1927. (MISS MADISON was the last Madison style stern steerer built here). TWINBEDS has captured the Class C stern steerer Northwest regatta title 11 times.

4LIYC Ice Yacht History: RED ARROW

by | Aug 12, 2019 | 2019-2020, Home Page

The recent “Garage Find” post inspired a morning of research on RED ARROW, a Madison-style stern-steerer built by William Bernard in the 1920s.

Peter Fauerbach mentioned that after years of being stored in an Madison apartment building owned by Warren Tetzlaff, RED ARROW was sold in the mid 1990s and shipped to Montana.What happened in between covers some interesting Madison history.

RED ARROW was originally owned by Joe Dean Jr., son of prominent Madison doctor Joseph Dean who founded the Dean Clinic. Joe’s brother, Frank, raced it as well.  The Deans lived next door to the Bernard Boat House on Gorham Street on Lake Mendota.

The boat was named after the 32nd Infantry Division, a World War One Army National Guard Division made up of units from Wisconsin and Michigan. RED ARROW won the C Class at the 1922 Northwest sailed on Lake Winnebago in Oshkosh, WI.

RED ARROW has a slight link to the famous aviator, Charles Lindbergh, who briefly attended the University of Wisconsin in 1921. When Lindbergh visited Madison in 1929, Dr. Joseph Dean Sr. told his son, Frank, that if he could get a ride in Lindbergh’s plane, he would buy him an airplane. Frank was successful and his father bought him that airplane.

More on Charles Lindbergh and Madison Ice Sailing: 
Charles Lindbergh Learned About Speed on Lake Mendota’s Ice
Meade Gougeon’s Essential “Evolution of Modern Sailboat Design”

Photos from the William and Carl Bernard Collection

Garage Find

by | Aug 11, 2019 | 2019-2020, Home Page, WSSA


Ran across this photo on the Historic Madison, WI Photo Group’s Facebook page over the weekend. The photo was part of a collection that a group member found in her dad’s garage. It’s titled “Boat House U.W. Dec. 97” (as in 1897). In it we see a Madison style stern-steerer, designed and built by William Bernard on Lake Mendota near the University of Wisconsin boat house (which was torn down in the 1950s). The Bernard Boat House was just a quick sail down the lake from the university. Back then, university fraternities owned iceboats and iceboats could also be rented by the day from the Bernard Boat House. Below is a photo dated 2 years previous to the UW Boat House photo with an impressive line up of stern-steerers at Bernard’s Boat House.

“Dean’s RED ARROW” looks similar to the stern-steerer in the 1897 photo.