Iceboats returned to the frozen Navesink River and Red Bank, New Jersey reacted like Taylor Swift was in town. Fences were treated as optional, everyone wanted a front-row view.
Our good friends at the historic North Shrewsbury Ice Boat and Yacht Club and the Hudson River Ice Yacht Club are back racing for a Tiffany silver cup first made in 1886, while the public presses toward the ice like it’s the pit at Madison Square Garden. When iceboats appear, winter suddenly has a main event.
RED BANK: ICE BOATING “AMERICA’S CUP” ON TAP, WITH WARNINGS By BRIAN DONOHUE
Stay out of the way of the ice boats. And stay off the construction site.
Those are the messages being sent by dual entities as Red Bank gets set to host the Van Nostrand Cup, an ice boat contest the NY Times in 2003 called possibly “the oldest and longest-deferred grudge match in sports history.”
For a second straight weekend, the frozen Navesink River is likely to draw not only ice boat race spectators to see it, but visitors looking to skate, frolic, or shoot selfies. Continue reading.
Earlier this week, NPR’s All Things Considered aired a short segment on ice sailing. I was invited to talk about the sport, how it works, why it is so fast, and some of the history.
While there is currently no sailing on the Four Lakes, the season itself is very much alive. The DN class is set to hold the DN North American Championship on Lake Wawasee in Indiana, with racing expected to begin Sunday, January 25. Follow along here: LINK
There’s even a webcam.
There are also early signs of other sites developing. Word on the street is that Green Lake has recently iced over and is worth watching as conditions evolve.
As I write this, it is –15°F, which is too cold to iceboat anyways, but not unusual for January, and not a reason to count the season out.
While we wait for Mother Nature’s super Zamboni to finish its work, with rain turning to snow over the next couple of days, there is time to look backward. A dive into the Daily Cardinal archives turned up an unexpected addition to Madison’s iceboating story.
The recent post about the UW student film Not Responsible led me into the University of Wisconsin newspaper The Daily Cardinal archives. While looking for references tied to the film, I started poking around more broadly to see what the paper had written about iceboating.
Iceboating appears in the Daily Cardinal from the late nineteenth century onward, and by the 1920s it was treated as routine winter life on campus. Boats were raced, rented, and rarely explained to readers. The paper assumed its audience already understood what iceboats were and how they fit into life on Lake Mendota.
One of the things I found along the way was a small but important addition to the Charles Lindbergh story in Madison.
For years, Lindbergh’s connection to iceboating here has been told through a story that centers on the motorized ice craft he helped build on Lake Mendota in 1921, powered by a motorcycle engine geared to an airplane propeller. That account is well documented, and it still stands.
What the Daily Cardinal archive adds is one more fact. In a 1929 article reflecting on Lindbergh’s Wisconsin years, the paper notes, without emphasis, that he owned an iceboat while he was a student. Iceboating was part of ordinary winter life on Lake Mendota at the time.
Lindbergh’s motorized iceboat looks like an extension of something he already understood well, speed on ice.
Family context helps explain why. Lindbergh’s maternal grandmother was a Lodge from Detroit, and his cousin Joe Lodge (part of the trio who designed the DN) was an active iceboater there. Detroit, like Madison, was a center of iceboating and mechanical experimentation in the early twentieth century. Iceboats there were not just raced but modified, tuned, and pushed. Lindbergh arrived in Madison already comfortable with machines, ice, and speed.
A later source adds more to Lindbergh’s connection to iceboating. In Evolution of Modern Sailboat Design, Meade Gougeon notes that Lindbergh is said to have assisted his cousin Joe Lodge with the design of a highly advanced rig installed on the Class A stern steerer DEUCE II in the mid 1930s. The boat featured a rotating wing mast believed to be the first of its kind. Although DEUCE II suffered repeated rigging failures, the concept carried forward, and Lodge went on to win the Stuart Cup and Hearst International Trophy in 1938 with the rebuilt DEUCE III. The account suggests that Lindbergh’s interest in iceboating did not end in Madison, but extended into later experimentation at the highest level of the sport.
Daily Cardinal, February 22, 1929
Joe Lodge, holding an iceboat runner, with Fritz Jungbluth in Detroit, 1937. Lodge was a cousin of Charles Lindbergh. Photo from the Bernard scrapbook collection.
Motorized iceboat likely powered by a Ford Model T engine. This is a separate experiment from Lindbergh’s motorized ice craft.
Ken Whitehorse adds the finishing touches to a display honoring the Whitehorse family’s legacy in iceboat and auto racing, featuring historic trophies and family photos.
Skeeter sailor Ken Whitehorse recently participated in an early-stage gathering hosted by Wisconsin Public Television for their upcoming documentary, Wisconsin Hometown Stories: Madison. The two-hour program will explore Madison’s history, focusing on Teejop — the Ho-Chunk name for this region, meaning “Four Lakes.”
WPT is working closely with members of the Ho-Chunk Nation to ensure their stories and perspectives are central to the project. WPT invited Ho-Chunk community members to share their memories of Madison during the event. Ken curated a presentation on the Whitehorse family’s deep involvement in iceboat and auto racing. He displayed several historic trophies — including the Ice Yacht Challenge Pennant, won by AJ Whitehorse in the 1980s — and noted, “Whitehorse names are all over these trophies.” It was a reminder of the family’s long-standing presence in Madison’s sporting culture. We were also blessed by the presence of Ken’s father, Walter Whitehorse — a longtime 4LIYC Skeeter sailor — who recently celebrated his 100th birthday.
A few days earlier, I also spoke with the producer about Madison’s iceboating history and shared memories of my late husband, Harry Whitehorse, whose legacy as an artist and iceboater continues to shape how we remember this place.
Staging the perfect shot back in the day —no filters, no drones, just a guy in a business suit on the ice and a camera.
I recently visited with Mauretta Mattison and her daughter, Lynn. Mauretta handed over a box overflowing with iceboating memorabilia that she had meticulously collected over the years, detailing her late husband Bill’s and family’s extraordinary life on the ice. It’s a collection that could keep an iceboating historian busy for months. As I quickly flipped through it, two items caught my attention: a pair of photos capturing what looks to be a lazy, light-air day on the ice and another featuring Elmer Millenbach, the Renegade’s mastermind
The first photo is a behind-the-scenes look at a photo shoot on the ice. Wisconsin State Journal photographer Edward Stein is lying on his side, dressed in a business suit and dress shoes—no winter gear.. He’s aiming at Bill Mattison, relaxed on the runner plank of his Skeeter, with another guy peering up at the sail from behind the boom. Next to it in the scrapbook is the finished product—the photo Stein snapped that day, which ran in the Wisconsin State Journal.
Then there’s a second photo that caught my eye—a classically cool image featuring Elmer Millenbach and his wife, Cora Lee, standing beside their Ford Thunderbird (possibly a 1964?) with Elmer’s Renegade on top of the car. Elmer, the Detroit innovator who designed the Renegade, was known for transporting his hull on top of cars instead of using a trailer. The Thunderbird is stylish match for the sleek lines of the Renegade.
Stay tuned as I dig deeper into this box of history.
Elmer and Cora Lee Millenbach have Fun Fun Fun cruising with style.
