That Time When A Car Raced Iceboats On Lake Monona

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.

Mad Men On Ice: The Motor City & Iceboat Advertising

DN Iceboats in Car Advertising
Another in the series on the connection between Detroit’s auto industry and iceboating.
From the golden era of illustrations, an ad not from the car manufacturer, but from the company that supplied the body components for the Plymouth Duster, Budd. The iceboating theme fit right in with the idea of the Duster’s sporty body style.

In DN trivia,  sail number 265 was assigned to Barbara Frank of Pewaukee at the 1957 Northwest which was sailed on Lake Monona in Madison, WI. The sail number was transferred to William Perrigo in 1958. I suspect that the artist randomly chose the sail numbers.
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Mad Men On Ice: The Motor City & Iceboat Advertising


Geoff Sobering emailed a link to this old favorite, a Chevrolet advertising newsreel from 1935 featuring a car racing a stern-steerer. A few days ago, Bob Rast posted the Oldsmobile magazine ad below in the 4LIYC Facebook group. (DN class records don’t indicate who owned 289)
Both got me thinking about how much Detroit’s auto industry and iceboating have been intertwined, not only in advertising, but in boat development and iceboat skippers who have ties to GM, Ford, Chrysler, etc.  Detroit has given us the DN and Elmer Millinbach, iceboat innovator.  Renegader Lorne Sherry (Ron’s father)  designed and tested trailer hitches for GM, DNers Paul Goodwin, Jim Grogan, Ted Flack, Rob Holman, and Leon Lebeau work in the industry. Photographer Gretchen Dorian’s family owned a GM dealership in Detroit.
Iceboat ads have been featured on this website previously but they are always fun to revisit to help get us fired up for the upcoming season. I’ll post a few more in the coming weeks. If you have a favorite and want to share it, let me know.

Oldsmobile DN Iceboat Ad

Art Siebke, NJ Skeeter Sailor

Art Siebke Camel Ad

We received an inquiry from the nephew of Greenwood Lake, New Jersey Skeeter sailor Art Siebke wanting to learn more about his uncle’s involvement in ice boating.

Above is part of a beautifully illustrated advertisement for Camel cigarettes featuring Siebke. Be sure to click on the image to see the entire panel.

Sailing as a member of the Skeeter Ice Boat Club, Siebke won the International Skeeter Association championship in 1948.

The ISA continues to award the Siebke Memorial Trophy to the skipper who travels the farthest to race his yacht in the annual regatta.

If you have any stories to share about Art Siebke, email to me and I’ll pass them on to his nephew.