I’ve overstood the windward mark by a few boatlengths, and as I bear away, the windward runner blade lifts a foot or so off the ice, then slams down hard. Still, the little DN iceboat slings me downwind like a proverbial bat out of hell. I’ve rounded third of 11 in my debut iceboat race, and I’m feeling pretty cocky. Until one boat passes me to windward as if I’m standing still. Then, another boat zooms past me to leeward. By the end of the leg, I’m dead last. Clearly, I have a lot to learn about how to sail an iceboat, especially downwind.
As a Midwest teen, I caught the sailing bug early and spent most of my spare time racing dinghies and crewing on any racing boat that would have me. Going fast was always the goal, and I vividly remember crewing on a 28-foot E Scow and planing for a mile or more on a two-sail reach. This was, to date, the fastest sailboat ride of my life. It seemed as though we were sailing as fast as the wind, and I began to wonder if breaking the wind barrier under sail was possible.
A little research back then revealed that, at one point, iceboats were the fastest man-made inventions on Earth. Large stern-steering iceboats on the Hudson River regularly reached speeds approaching 100 mph as early as the 1880s. The secret to an iceboat’s speed is fairly simple: Runners on smooth ice have very low drag compared with a conventional sailboat hull. Runner blade resistance is almost negligible at full glide, and almost any well-designed rig will allow the craft to break the wind barrier. As an iceboat accelerates, its apparent wind shifts forward and the acceleration is addictively breathtaking.
Getting hooked on the hard stuff
Over the centuries, iceboat designs have evolved. Most Hudson River iceboats had a wide runner plank forward, a rear oval-shaped seating platform, and a tiller-controlled steering runner aft. Most were sloop-rigged, but some had huge lateen sails. These designs worked well enough, but the stern-steerer rig had inherent control problems when the runner plank lifted, resulting in spinouts and capsizes—not fun when sailing at highway speeds.
Today, almost all iceboats are cat-rigged bow steerers with the runner plank aft. The DN is the largest one-design iceboat class in the world, but there are several other successful one-designs, including the Arrow, Nite and Renegade, to name a few. There are also development classes and hundreds of home-built designs. The current speed record is reputed to be 143 mph, set on Lake Winnebago, in Wisconsin, way back in 1938. In a high-tech boat with perfect ice and wind conditions, 200 mph is not out of the question.
Until my late teens, I had never seen an iceboat, but that all changed in 1963 when I was a freshman at Denison University near Columbus, Ohio. In the fall of that year, I had crewed on Lightnings at the Buckeye Lake YC not far from the Denison campus. That winter was particularly cold, with weeks of subzero temperatures. Thick, snow-free ice formed on all the area lakes, ponds and rivers.
One day in February, I borrowed a car and drove to Buckeye Lake, where I witnessed a vintage gaff-rigged iceboat tacking its way toward the docks. The wind was in the upper teens, and the ice was Zamboni smooth. Even hard on the wind, the boat was moving at an impressive speed. The rumble of the cast iron runner blades carving their way across the frozen surface was all I could hear until the boat approached, suddenly spun head-to-wind, and stopped yards from where I was standing.
The skipper, an older gentleman with a big smile on his face, beckoned me, and asked, “You want a ride?”
Apparently, his crew had failed to show, so he’d ventured out solo, albeit without using the jib. He needed a mainsheet trimmer. And I needed a thrill. So, I shoved him off, jumped in, and we rumbled off onto a broad reach. As our speed increased, the mainsail luffed, and following the skipper’s orders, I trimmed the sheet in hard. We accelerated to a speed I’d never experienced under sail. My stomach was telling me that we must be sailing down an incline, even though my brain knew that the ice was perfectly flat. It was an odd sensation. The skipper did some calculations in his head and estimated that we were doing upwards of 60 mph. I took his word for it, but it felt so much faster. We bombed around the lake for about 30 minutes before he dropped me off where he had picked me up, then sailed away. I never got his name, but I will never forget the surreal experience.
Like riding a bike—on ice
It was almost 20 years before I got to sail an iceboat again. That time, I was living in upstate New York, where DN racing was a popular diversion for soft-water sailors waiting out the long winters. One of these icemen was Bill Sill, from Sodus Bay, New York, a large bay just off the south shore of Lake Ontario, east of Rochester. Sill was a gifted dinghy racer but also built boats, including DNs at his father’s marina. We became friends on the summer dinghy racing circuit, and he was always talking about the joys (and frustrations) of iceboat racing.
One Friday night in early spring, he called to tell me that the bay has smooth ice. He had an extra boat and invited me up to race the following morning. At 6:00 a.m., I was in my VW Rabbit heading to Sodus, about 2 hours away.
He was right. The conditions were near perfect. The ice was about a foot thick and as smooth as nature can make it. It was sunny and the wind was in the midteens. I was dressed in downhill-skiing clothing, tinted ski goggles and a full-length international-orange jumpsuit (to make it easier for the first responders to find my body).
Bill threw me a motorcycle helmet that loosely fit and explained that the first race would start in five minutes. He gave me a 60-second safety briefing, including the fact that in iceboat racing, a windward boat has right-of-way over a leeward boat. I reminded him that I’d never skippered an iceboat before and maybe I should spend a few hours practicing before entering a race.
He dismissed that notion, saying that practice would be “boring.” Racing, he said, will be a better way to learn. Five minutes later, we were on the starting line. Six of the 11 boats were angled on starboard tack and the other group on port. Somebody counted down aloud: “Five, four, three, two, one—GO!” and we were off.
There was a lingering deep freeze that produced fine ice conditions. I didn’t own an iceboat at the time, so I committed to building one in one night.
Sailing a DN upwind is somewhat similar to soft water sailing, but a lot faster. At that moment, I was feeling somewhere between exhilarated and terrified. By dumb luck, I caught a big lift going into the first mark (a bright red traffic cone) and rounded in third place close to the leaders. I knew that I would have to tack downwind because going straight was simply not an option, but I also assumed that the sail needed to be eased a little sailing on a broad reach. Not so.
Within a few minutes, the entire fleet passed me on the way to the first jibe. Knowing what angle to sail, optimal sail trim, and when to jibe is a very seat-of-the-pants skill learned over time and many races, and changes constantly based on wind velocity, ice conditions, and tactical considerations. I was utterly lacking in those skills. I improved as the day wore on but still finished last in every heat, and yet, it was one of the best racing days of my life and certainly the most exciting.
To the ice by whatever means necessary
Iceboating is a true addiction, and there is something unexplainable that happens to hardwater fanatics whenever perfection presents itself. Drop everything, reschedule meetings, cancel plans. I can attest to this: One week in January long ago while living on Cazenovia Lake near Syracuse, New York, there was a lingering deep freeze that produced fine ice conditions. I didn’t own an iceboat at the time, so I committed to building one in one night.
Using a pair of long downhill skis I’d rescued from the local landfill, I assembled a rudimentary stand-up iceboat out of scrap plywood, two-by-fours and an old Windsurfer rig and two sails. I bolted the skis to the two-by-four frame, angled so only the inside edge touched the ice. I then installed foot straps made out of rope and short lengths of garden hose looped through holes drilled through the plywood deck. It was done by midnight and ready to test.
The following day, the ice was perfect, and the wind was 10 to 15 knots. I donned a bicycle helmet, ski goggles and ice hockey pads, and rigged the larger of the two sails. My kids looked on, with one of them dubbing the boat “The Rails of Death” and predicting my imminent demise. Undeterred, I hopped on, pulled in the sail, and took off at an alarming rate of speed. Seconds into the ride, a puff hit, the sail got overpowered, and in a blink, I was thrown into a 720-degree flat spin, me still dangling in the foot loops. To my surprise, I rose from the ice injury-free, and my craft was undamaged. It was back to the beach to bend on the smaller sail.
My next runs were much more successful. Rails sailed surprisingly well with the smaller sail, and I could steer it like a Windsurfer by moving the sail fore and aft. My kids even tried it and admitted that my contraption was great fun. I did some rough calculations and concluded that it could sail in the 25 to 30 mph range. No world records would be set, but it was not bad for a one-night workshop wonder.
Subsequent winters got warmer, making for more snow and thinner ice, but I couldn’t resist buying an Icefish class boat that came on the market at a bargain price. The Icefish is an aluminum tube design that’s steered with foot pedals. Its double fiberglass seats look as though they’ve been stolen from a school lunchroom. This one was powered by a 75-square-foot Sunfish lateen sail with a Sunfish mast modified with fore and side stays. I got about five years of memorable days of breakneck speed on the Icefish before selling it to a farmer who wanted to try sailing it on his frozen 5-acre pond.
These days, I get an occasional ride on a friend’s Locksley Skimmer, an aluminum frame affair with a canvas seat and a 45-square-foot sail. It’s no DN, but it’s still a thrill to sail on the rare days when we get clear ice and a fresh breeze.
Skills transfer to soft water sailing
Iceboating skills certainly translate to conventional sailing and racing. One of my Cazenovia clubmates, Ray Cudney, who sails a DN when conditions permit but also races everything from Lasers to J Boats, says, “One thing that always struck me was how quickly an iceboat responds to the slightest of sail trim. Iceboating teaches one how important the small adjustments are because it produces an instantaneous response. When you get it right, everything tightens up, the mast bends like a pretzel, and you are given that instant speed reward.”
Cudney also notes that small adjustments in mast design, runner shaping, perfect runner alignment and plank interaction, and even efforts to reduce bow-stay diameter all play a part in developing winning boatspeed. If you think about it, there are striking similarities between iceboats and the current crop of foiling craft. It’s all about reducing resistance and drag to a minimum, and both can sail several times the speed of the true wind.
Perhaps future America’s Cup skippers should have winter training blocks in Minnesota in February. But then again, once they experienced the rush of iceboating, they might be forever jaded and never go back to soft-water sailing.
