The Founders and the Founders: An original Dutch style ice yacht on Lake Orsa in Sweden.
Ice sailing was on the minds of America’s founders! This post was originally going to be about how the 1918 influenza pandemic affected the ice yachting world but during the course of research, I stumbled upon some important history that took place 150 years earlier while browsing the National Archives website .Benjamin Franklin ordered a Dutch ice yacht model* and a set of plans from someone in Holland. (The Dutch are founding fathers of ice sailing.) John Adams even was a passenger in one while in Holland though he didn’t seem too thrilled with it. Maybe Ben Franklin’s iceboat plans and model are gathering dust in some museum? Below are excerpts from letters to Ben Franklin and from John Adams.
“What if the iron that steers was at the front?”
To Benjamin Franklin from François Willem de Monchy, 9 January 1767
“I have spoken here with a man to make you a model of an Iceboat, but as it must be made in the proportion of an Inche, or perhaps less to a foot it will cost you about 10 Duc., that is between 4 and 5 guineas, and this is the reason why I ask you first if you will give so much for it, if you like it, I’ll take care it shall be made soon, and send it over directly.”
To Benjamin Franklin from François Willem de Monchy, 15 May 1767
Agreeable to your desire I have send you two drawings of an Ice-boat. That without the mast is in the proportion of an Inch to a foot, and that with the mast but the half of that proportion otherwise we could not have brought it within the compass of the paper. You would have had it much sooner, had not the death of my deaer Mother prevented me from fininching my part of the drawing. The model without the mast was done by the ship-builder of the Admiralty, the other by my self under his direction. I shipped it yesterday on board the King George sloop, Capt. Harper, who lives in Queen’s Court St. Katherines and promised to take great care of them. *Footnote: Ben Franklin appears to have asked Monchy for scale drawings of an iceboat of the type used on the Dutch canals. Although Monchy here uses both the words “drawing” and “model,” it seems probable that he was using them interchangeably, not that he was sending both pictorial representations on paper and three-dimensional scaled constructions of wood or other material. The scale drawings he did send are reproduced here, though necessarily much reduced from the scale mentioned in the letter.
John Adams to Richard Cranch The Hague April 3. 1784
He wrote about having to go “to Holland in one of the worst Seasons ever known, and I underwent Such severe hardships in Packet Boats, Boors-waggons and Iceboats as again endangered my Health and my Life.”
Sorry I haven’t been posting much this month. I hope this long post will make up for my absence. After the Junior World Ice Sailing championship,me and my brother, Ron, left Sweden and headed to Norway for some sight seeing and to visit our relatives there. (Sailable ice could be found in Norway this winter. Like Sweden, they don’t have much snow.)
In case you didn’t know, the Dutch are the grandfathers of this sport. Back in the 1600s, they were the first ones to throw a plank and runners on a traditional soft water sailing boat in order to utilize the frozen canals of Holland. The day before we left for Norway, Maarten de Groot of the Dutch ice sailing club, De Robben, sent a message that 10 of the club’s old style original Dutch iceboats were heading to Lake Orsa in Sweden for a week of cruising. Maarten and I have been corresponding by email for many years about his club and these historic boats. An opportunity like this might never come along again and I knew I had to find a way to get back here to Orsa after the Norway visit to see these boats and meet the club members. Thankfully, the ticket change was easy (I was credited $19 for the change, thanks Delta!)
Ron and I drove back from Oslo to Uppsala, Sweden on Monday and we enjoyed the warm atmosphere of a family dinner that evening at the home of Swedish junior sailor, Axel Steffner. Ron flew back to Wisconsin yesterday while I rented a car and made the 3.5 hour drive back to Orsa, my third time here this month. (Reminds me of being in Lake City, MN on Pepin for basically the entire month of January 2019.) Google navigation makes driving in Sweden very easy, but the many “watch out for moose” road signs keeps one alert! (Ron and I did see a moose standing near the road in Norway – we thought it was a horse at first.)
I arrived back at Orsa around noon and had lunch with Maarten, his wife Marianne and other club members in their cozy, rustic Orsa Camping cabin. Being able to stay in one place right at the launch is quite a luxury in ice sailing. I spent the rest of the afternoon on the ice.
I learned so much about these boats and the club members who cherish them so much. First, about the club. Here’s a roster of the boats that sail with De Robben. They have over 100 club members and are growing. (There are other clubs like them in the Netherlands where the focus is the old Dutch style boats.) There hasn’t been ice in the Netherlands in 10 years so they’ve had to embrace travel. They have one organizational meeting every November to discuss their upcoming trip. They don’t race, it’s all strictly for pleasure and camaraderie. It’s family oriented ice sailing and many husbands and wives sail together. Club members enjoy helping each other out in the shop and on the ice, one of the best traditions in iceboating all over the world. Last evening, club members gathered in one of the small cabins for drinks and snacks. I counted 18 people and reflected upon the fact that the 4LIYC was going to be meeting in a few hours back home. Sitting in that cabin surrounded by ice sailors was just like being at a 4LIYC meeting except everyone was speaking in Dutch. They are starting to take down the boats today but a few will stay here until Sunday.
I’ll post more later because I want to get ready to head out to the ice and catch some more rides. A sincere thank you to Maarten and all club members from De Robben for this incredible experience. I hope to be able to write part 2 tonight which will focus more on the boats. I’m moving a few km to stay in Furudal for another regatta.
Oh, and one more reason to extend the trip – there’s a Swedish DN ranking regatta this weekend here. The Race Committee has graciously asked me to be part of it.
Dutch DN in beautiful vintage condition
Trailer
Photo: Maarten De Groot A “mini” Monotype, a very interesting boat.
The people took matters into their own hands. They poured kerosene oil on the ice. The Cedar Lake Ice Company retaliated by laughing that those responsible would simply have to pay more for their unspoiled ice in the summer. And when that didn’t stop them, the ice company started spreading ashes on the ice tracks used by the ice boaters.
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.
