Ice Yachting

Goggled against the stinging snow and wind that burn your face, you sit tense in a narrow cockpit, legs braced, toes hooked under a crossbar. The tiller jerks and trembles in your hands, intensifying your sensation of speed. A few inches beneath you is the ice, now white and granular, now slick as black glass, racing by to the singing of the wind in your rigging and the crisp cutting sound of the sharp-bladed runners. You put your nose down into your muffler to catch a warm breath--the wind has you gasping and your cheeks feel shaved by the Z in Zero. Hard into the tall sail overhead smashes a fresh gust and up, up come your shoulders as the boat keels over with one runner high off the ice, ripping along at 40 m.p.h.

That is ice boating, a sport as old in the U. S. as the meeting in the cellar of John Vassar's brewery at Poughkeepsie where his cronies formed the first ice yachting club in America in 1861. Once lording it over the railroad trains they outdistanced along the banks of the Hudson River, ice boats yielded to river ice breakers, and ice yachting waned in the East except at such centres as New Jersey's Shrewsbury River, Lakes Hopatcong and Greenwood, the Mystic Lakes in Massachusetts, Lake Champlain in Vermont and New York. In Scandinavian Minnesota,* in Wisconsin and Michigan, ice yachting has flourished. The Northwestern Ice Yachting Association's classifications of ice boats are used nationally and their annual regatta, held last 'week on Lake Pewaukee, just west of Milwaukee, is the nearest thing to national ice boat championships.

Bundled in sheepskins, mackinaws and fur-lined boots, owners and skippers assembled there last week with 40 racing boats. The ice was bumpy, the winds weak, but they cut their five-day program to two days and made the best of it. Boats are classified by sail areas. Smaller boats may race in classes for larger boats. Winner in Class A (350 sq. ft. of sail) was The Fritz, a $2,000 craft, holder of the trophy donated by William Randolph Hearst in 1904, owned by Fred Jungbluth of Madison, Wis., piloted by Carl Bernard. Its best speed over the 12-mile windward-leeward course was 31 min. 51 sec. Class B (250 ft.) was won by Su-Jac III, Pilot H. V. Fitzcharles of Lake Geneva, Wis. Class C (175 ft.): Holy Smoke III, Pilot Don Campbell of Delavan, Wis. Skeeter winner: Gale, Pilot Harry Nye of Chicago.

Watching this year's races, unable to participate because of a recent operation, was Starke Meyer onetime Commodore of the Northwestern Ice Yachting Association, at 45 the uncrowned king of a royal family of ice yacht experimenters. Almost killed when his radical Paula III overturned in 1933, unshipping her mast and smashing her hull down on him, Starke Meyer returned to racing, continued his experimental Paula series through 1935. His four brothers, Arnold, Chris, Henry (eight-time winner of the N. W. I. Y. A. 350-ft. class with his Dorla) and William have aided him. Chiefly to them is credited the idea of having the steering runner at the front instead of stern so that when the wind lifts the rear end off the ice, the pilot can still steer and so avoid dangerous spins.

To the Brothers Meyer is also credited development of the popular "skeeter" ice boat. When introduced in 1931 on Lake Pewaukee by one Roger Joys of Milwaukee the first skeeter was merely a ten-foot triangular wooden frame supported on three runners, carrying a small sail on a 15-ft. mast. Today it is a sporty, front -steering ice-racing machine with 75-ft. sail area, manageable by a girl, thrilling enough for a man, inexpensive (150-$250). light enough (125 Ib.) to be disassembled and hauled about by auto. While not so fast as such legendary performances as Kittie's 1 1/4 miles at 107 m.p.h. at Red Bank in 1885 or Haze's reputed two miles on the Hudson at 120 m.p.h., a skeeter, like any well-designed ice boat, can attain a speed almost twice the velocity of the wind it is sailed in.

* Norwegians and Swedes lead the world in ice boating. They took the craft from Holland where they were used for winter canal travel. The Stockholm Ice Yacht Club has the largest active ice boat fleet of any club.

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