CLANCY on Lake Monona near Law Park in Madison, WI c.1952
Craig Wilson found the above photo while looking through his dad J. Dale Wilson’s slide collection. (Craig is the aerial kite photographer who has been snapping our pictures for many years. See some of his work here on Flickr.) Craig figures the slide dates from around 1952 or 1953 and wondered if we knew anything about the yellow stern-steerer. I sent it off to Andy Gratton, Mike Peters, and Don Sanford. Here’s what the collective stern steerer history brain trust found:
Via Don Sanford:
The gods of iceboating must be sending me a message…..
I believe that this is the Clancy. She was owned by the Oetking family. See page 81 of “the book” (mine). [On Fourth Lake]
I have been on the trail of these folks for years and during the past six weeks (pandemic) I had a chance to plow through the internet, sailing websites, and obits. This is a family of sailors. Last week, I finally connected with Curt Oetking. (Who also goes by “Pete.”) His dad, Pete, crewed for Carl [Bernard] on the MARY B in a few regattas.
I sent him a photo of the Clancy that Jay Payton gave me several years ago. He sent this message:
“Clancy which was my mother Clare’s nickname…..”
Armed with that info, I looked in the Bernard Slide index and found several entries that mention either “Clancy” or Oetking. Somewhere I have a statement that the Clancy was a scaled-down version of the MARY B. Andy [Gratton] told me that he knows where she is now.
As for the photo, I believe that this was taken on Lake Monona, just off Law Park. it’s the only place on either lake where cars can park that close to the water.
WSSA Secretary/Treasurer Andy Gratton reports that Clancy is still around and in the care of Jim Rettke in Marinette who has owned it at least 35 years or more.
CLANCY in front of the Ray Stroud residence on Farwell Drive in Maple Bluff, Madison, WI.
Let’s watch an old sail being repaired at the Hardanger fartøyvernsenter in Western Norway for MATHILDE, a fishing boat, built in 1884. The same techniques were probably used to make and repair the sails on the stern-steerers pictured below. William Bernard kept a rental fleet of iceboats on Lake Mendota. Imagine that! Tip of the Helmet: Ann Gratton
William Bernard’s fleet of rental stern steerer iceboats on Lake Mendota c.1895
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.
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.
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.
