Please join Henry Bossett and me today on Zoom as we discuss the history and current state of North American ice sailing. Here are links to explore further some of the topics we will delve into today. I’ll add more after the presentation if necessary. You’ll find links to iceboat clubs and class organizations in the right sidebar (on a laptop) or towards the bottom of the page (on a phone.)
Mystic Seaport Museum Facebook Page
Let’s cool off
Ice boating experts, Deb Whitehorse and Henry Bossett, will discuss the sport of ice sailing on August 4, at 2:00 PM ET in a free virtual presentation.
Click here to register: http://ow.ly/EHL550K1uEg
In conjunction with their current exhibition, Story Boats, Mystic Seaport Museum is hosting a virtual presentation about ice sailing on Thursday, August 4, 2022, at 1 PM CT/2 PM ET. From Stern-Steerers to Skeeters, Henry Bossett and I will discuss the roots, social history, and development of North American ice sailing. Henry is a DN class champion and retired sailmaker who has spent years combing through newspaper and museum archives finding the stories that define our sport.
Let’s cool off
Ice boating experts, Deb Whitehorse and Henry Bossett, will discuss the sport of ice sailing on August 4, at 2:00 PM ET in a free virtual presentation.
Click here to register: http://ow.ly/EHL550K1uEg
Illustration from St. Nicholas magazine, February 1879.
The classic book Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates deserves a slot in any iceboating book collection because it describes ice yachts in beautiful detail. The author, Mary Mapes Dodge, may have acquired some knowledge of ice sailing living in New York and New Jersey. Dodge edited a famous children’s magazine for many years, and she included iceboat plans and articles in several of the issues. In 1879, the magazine St. Nicholas published “The Ice Boating Song.” Dodge put music to the song from her famous book.
From Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates
Just then a beautiful iceboat with reefed sail and flying streamers swept leisurely by. Its deck was filled with children muffled up to their chins. Looking at them from the ice you could see only smiling little faces imbedded in bright-colored woolen wrappings. They were singing a chorus in honor of Saint
Nicholas. The music, starting in the discord of a hundred childish voices, floated, as it rose, into exquisite harmony:
World’s earliest wind surfer? “Ollerus traverses the sea on his magic bone. 16th-century woodcut. Olaus Magnus, “Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus.”
Summer Solstice is behind us; we are on course for the next ice sailing season. Nordic countries have marked Midsommer since Pagan times when Thor and Odin ruled the north. I stumbled upon Ull, a Norse God who was the fastest deity around and patron of our favorite time of year. Ull could transform the shield he carried into a boat and bones into skates. With that much power, it’s not a stretch to believe his bow was basically a mast. Put his boat, bone skates, and mast together, and that’s an iceboat. In some Norse mythology accounts, Ull married Skadi, the Goddess of winter and cold. It’s five months until the Western Challenge, the season’s first fun DN regatta. Sharpen those bones!
Paul Krueger’s Class A Skeeter on Lake Monona, March 2022.
I can find no newspaper accounts or photos from the 1948 International Skeeter Association regatta, but this 30 second YouTube clip makes up for the lack of pictures. Sailed on Fox Lake in Illinois, Elmer Millenbach won in RENEGADE II, described as a “magic” boat. The Renegade class competed as Class A Skeeters in the ISA regatta until 1950 when they first sailed their own championship. Tip of the Helmet: John Eisenlohr
From “The Renegade Story.”
The non-profit association formed was to not sell plans, but to include them with first years membership dues. The first year, besides scattered memberships all over the sailing area, fleets were building in Toronto, Toledo, and Detroit. At a Detroit regatta, of 42 boats on the starting line, 22 were Renegades. My boat still did most of the winning and in our fleet we tried switching boats in “scrub races”. Whomever sailed my boat won. This seemed to impart some sort of message to some people even though I was handicapped trying to sail someone else’s boat that was set up for someone 6″ sorter than I. Less than subtle suggestions were made that I should build a new boat (according to the plans drawn up) to eliminate any “magic” inherent in Renegade II. This was of course a challenge I couldn’t refuse. I sold Renegade II at the end of the 1949 season.” Elmer Millenbach
