2020 Northwest Ice Yacht Racing Association Information
March 13-15,2020
Lake Waconia, Minnesota
1957 News & Views
We’ve started a project to scan all the International Skeeter Association News and Views. Here’s a the 1957 November ISA News And Views which was edited by Jane Pegel. Interesting to note that discussions about Skeeter development from 57 years ago haven’t changed all that much. 1957 November ISA News And Views
1957 News & Views
Bill Perrigo on THUNDERJET
Here’s the April edition of the 1957 ISA News & Views, edited by Jane Pegel. Topics include an ISA regatta report, organization of a committee on boat development, Ice Yacht Challenge Pennant report, more opinions on boat development, reports to Jane from the clubs, and a Bargain Counter, where you’l find the “cheapest advertising in the world for the world’s greatest cheapSKATES”. I have no photos from the 1957 ISA but have posted some Skeeter pictures taken by Carl Bernard from around that time.
Cab Forward C Skeeter Build in Minnesota
This is MN based Pat Heppert’s new C Skeeter. It’s an attempt at a lower cost, front cockpit Skeeter that is easy to transport in its small lightweight enclosed trailer, and easy to set up by one person. Will it be fast? Will it be the slowest anchor-like contraption in existence? Will the C Skeeter fleet start to build? Or will it remain the under-represented Skeeter class? More construction pictures are on the Minnesota web site under the “How To” section, www.iceboating.net. Pat says that full size CAD drawn frame patterns are available.”
1957 ISA News & Views Newsletter
“Your sail came down because the mast exploded!”
The December 1957 ISA News & Views covers a variety of topics including a discussion of the complications of ice boat racing rules in the years before the National Iceboat Authority was established. There were rules of the Northwest, the ISA, the DN60 fleet, and the North American Yacht Racing Union.
Ice Yacht Challenge Pennant: There are some historic photos from the 1952 Ice Yacht Challenge Pennant which was the second time it was sailed in the west after Ed Rollberg went out east and won it in 1952.
4LIYC News: “Our old member but new Skeeter skipper, Paul Krueger (17) has built himself a new Skeeter with a 23′ rig.”
Read it all here.
Early ISA Video
In his search to learn more about a Ray Ruge built Skeeter he is restoring, Maine iceboater Bill Buchholz has inadvertently discovered some historic 16mm film in the archives of the Cohasset, MA Historical Society Francis Hagerty collection. The footage centers around the Fox Lake, Illinois Skeeters of the early 1940s. It’s possible that the films are from the 1941 and 1942 International Skeeter Association regattas. Considering the ISA was first sailed in 1940, these are very early films that show the early development of the Skeeter class. Some things to look for in the video below:
- The winners of the 1941 and 1942 ISA regattas from Fox Lake, Harry Salmon and JD Graff (the first JD!)
- The A class stern steerer, Ferdinand the Bull, then owned and sailed by C.S. Jacobs of Detroit, MI
- A really cool ice car that would make a fine RC vehicle.
- Some very early DNs
- Ted Mead, designer and builder of the famous Mead iceboats, many of which are on the ice today.
- ISA trophies (with kittens!?)
1941 & 2016 ISA Regattas: Dogs & Cats Edition
2016 International Skeeter Association regatta winner, Steve Orlebeke, posted a great photo of his puppy, Mac, posing with the regatta trophy on his Facebook page today. This gave me the idea to post a related photo from the 1941 ISA and to kick off a new version of Throw Back Thursday with a twist. A related contemporary photo will be included with the vintage photo as a reminder that a new season is just weeks away. See the 1941 ISA Regatta report and video posted below.
2010 Northwest
2010 Northwest
Let’s throw it back to 2010 Northwest regatta sailed on Lake Winnebago in Oshkosh. This was the first Northwest that photographer Gretchen Dorian attended. It was a challenge to pick two photos from each fleet because there were so many good ones to choose from. The 3 day regatta was typical because we waited for wind for a day and half and had to set up two separate courses on Sunday in order to get the required number of races completed.
1994 Northwest
1994 Northwest
Ran across this photograph a few days ago and it’s too cool not to post. It’s the 4LIYC’s Ken Kreider in his rear seat Skeeter POON sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s. The background looks like Lake Kegonsa near Madison, WI. Back in those days, Ken was a very competitive Skeeter sailor who loved high wind sailing and his weight gave him an advantage on light air days. Ken won the ISA championship in 1988. Pat Heppert sent along a note about POON: “…this is the boat that I sailed from about 2002 to 2014. When Ken got out of the Skeeters [he] sold everything to Dave Travis in Chicago, I then bought the POON IV hull and springboard from Dave Travis. I remember grinding off all the pink within about the first week of owning it because I just couldn’t even stand looking at it. Great memories. The boat is now owned by a recreational sailor in lower Michigan, who seems to be happy with it.”
1956 Northwest
1956 Northwest
Here’s another vintage ice boat newsreel from British Pathé, the 1956 Northwest Regatta sailed on Geneva Lake.
Read about the regatta in this Oshkosh Daily Northwestern newspaper report from January 23, 1956.
Since we’re on the subject of the Northwest, this is a good opportunity to note that there’s a new webpage dedicated to the regatta with up to date By Laws, Sailing Instructions, Records of Regatta Winners, and Northwest Archives. Many thanks to SIBC’s Steve Schalk for helping to organize the page.
1954 Northwest
From left- John Jacobs Sr., Bill Sarns, Skip Boston, and Elmer Millenbach, probably at a Detroit Ice Yacht Club banquet, c early 1950s
1954 Northwest
1954 marked the first time that the DN class competed in the Northwest and Skip Boston won that inaugural DN title. It was also a year that competitors completed the regatta despite tough conditions that ranged from no wind, 40 mph wind, followed by single digit temperatures. The regatta was scheduled for Pewaukee on January 15-71, 1954. The regatta’s opening day was a wash because the wind never materialized. On Saturday, “high winds, blowing snow, and poor visibility hampered racing…but good ice and 40 mph winds prevailed,” according to the Wisconsin State Journal. [40 miles per hour winds, really?-ed.]
1951 Northwest
1953 Northwest
The off season is the best time for this website to catch up on posting iceboating history. Jane Pegel recently sent a magazine page from 1951 Click here to see article.about the Northwest which motivated me to chose that historic regatta as the focus of TBT. Next week, we’ll start at the beginning.
The 1951 Northwest was sailed on Gull Lake in Michigan. The Mary B won the A stern steerer division. That was the third year in a row she won the Northwest and she would go on to win in 1952 and 1953.
The newspaper accounts are full of interesting details, such as the Mary B costing $24,000 to build. (Right click on the newspaper articles to open them in a new tab if you’d like to take a closer look at them.)
- Class A:Mary B, O.T.Havey, Owner; Carl Bernard, Skipper.
- Class B: Miss Jane II, Dan Coffey Jr., Einar Brink
- Class C: Susan Jo, Lambert, Stroshine, Dick Heumueller
- Class D: Rosemary II, Don Ward
- Free For All: Renegade, Skeeter E Class, Elmer Millenbach Detroit, Mi.
- Free For All 2nd Place: Cyclone, Howard L. Boston
- Class E Skeeter: Cyclone 7th, Howard L. Boston
MARY B Wins Again!
Photo by Gretchen Dorian
The classic stern steerer, MARY B, and the folks working hard to restore her, have received a 2017 Preservation Award in the catagory of Preservation from the Madison Trust for Historic Preservation.
AWARDS CEREMONY
Date: Thursday, May 18, 2017
Location: Wisconsin Historical Society, 816 State Street.
Time: Hors d’oeuvres, drinks, and social hour in the WHS lobby from 5:30-6:50 p.m. Awards ceremony begins in the WHS reading room at 7:00 p.m.
More information
Stern Steerer Cruise on Lake Petenwell
Joe Terry, Andy Gratton, and Mike Kroll powering through the snow drifts as only stern steerers can do on Lake Petenwell in central Wisconsin on January 4, 2015.
1968 USSR Championship
Via WSSA Secretary/Treasurer Andy Gratton alerts us to this really interesting Youtube video: “Matt Critchley found this video. Wing-sails on stern steerers, all they need is a bubble canopy. I don’t even see any wires on these boats. Everyone should see these boats.”
Ole Evinrude’s Ice Boats
Ole Evinrude, inventor of the first reliable outboard boat motor, also built and sold stern-steerers in his factory for a brief time during the 1920s in Wisconsin.
The only reference I’ve been able to find online to Evinrude ice boats is from the Rudder Magazine of February 1922. Evinrude exhibited an ice boat at the New York Power Boat Show that year. (Enter the search term “ice boat” on this link, quite a bit about ice boats in this magazine.)
The caption in the magazine reads “Evinrude Motor Company: A novelty will be a fully rigged Class F ice boat.” Intrestingly enough, here’s another photo with an “F” on the sail. Thanks to Mike Peters for the photos.
UPDATE: Mark Weiner writes: “Saw the photo’s from Mike Peters of the old Evinrudes posted. I though you might like some photos of an old Evinrude ( or at least parts of one) as it exists today. The boat is “Spindler”. Acquired about ten years ago and refurbished by Dan Tess and Mark Wiener. Home port of Fond du Lac. As you can see by the photos some parts have been rebuilt through the years, but there are may signs of the old boat still there. The most obvious is the tail block. The runners, and the plugged holes in the plank for the saddle brackets. The mast is now a banana, but the sail cut looks much the same, and is still cotton. We are still doing work on her each year to make her sail better, but we do intend to keep her looking as original as possible. Where ever we set up, Spindler seems to be a crowd pleaser and a calling card for the sport.
We do sail the “B class” with the WSSA when ever possible. We are not the most competitive boat in the fleet, but we would like to see many of the old boats come out and sail with us. If we could get enough old boats on the ice we could start a cotton sail division.
The photos enclosed were taken during a Spring rigging improvement day a few years ago.”
1948 Northwest at Geneva Lake
I came across these photos while searching through the Life Magazine photo archives for the 1962 issue with a Pewaukee Skeeter on the cover. It brought me back to a few weeks ago, sitting on Bill and Mauretta Mattison’s lake side porch with a group of old friends who gathered to reminisce about the stern steerers MENACE, MARY B, and Madison iceboating history. Bill shared the story of the time he crewed for Jim Lunder on FRITZ at the 1948 Northwest and how they won the regatta. The last A stern steerer race was sailed in dimming light at the end of the day. During the race, Bill and Jim sailed into Williams Bay which was not a good place to be sailing an iceboat in near darkness because at that time, ice was harvested there and slabs of ice were piled all over the bay. With a lot of luck, Jim Lunder piloted the FRITZ around the ice blocks without hitting them and made it to the finish line in the darkness. Life’s photos from that regatta are posted here. Northwest regatta winners posted here.
1947 Northwest
A55 is an A Class Stern-Steer TAKU, currently owned by the Schloemer family in Lake Geneva, WI
1947 Northwest: Post WW2 Boom Years Begin
After a 5 year hiatus because of World War 2, the first post-war Northwest was held at Oshkosh in 1947. 4LIYC’s FRITZ (with new owners, the Lunder brothers and Carl Bernard at the helm) won the A stern steerer trophy. Ed Rollberg, who would go on to bring the Ice Yacht Challenge Pennant to the midwest a few years later, won the E Skeeter title. Iceboaters who served in WW2 came back with new ideas about boat building, particularly the great Elmer Millenbach. More about Elmer next time.
Shortly before the 1947 Northwest, Eastern iceboater, Ray Ruge, wrote an in depth article in Yachting Magazine about the state of iceboating in North America. Read it here.
Skeeters. Note the lack of springboards.
1942 Northwest
1942 Northwest: WW2 Years Begin
The 1942 Northwest was sailed in Menominee, Michigan just 6 weeks after the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and would be the last one sailed until 1947. Neenah Ice Yacht Club’s Jim Kimberly won the E Skeeter title in PHANTOM II. There was no entry in the A fleet that year. The “queen of the ice lanes”, FRITZ, stayed on her home ice that season. (Read more about FRITZ coming out of “exile” here.) In fact no 4LIYC skippers competed in the Northwest that year. Here’s a Capital Times article detailing the winners of the regatta.
1934 Northwest
Madison’s iceboating history is all around if you know where to look. The FRITZ is still remembered at the former Bernard Boathouse on Gorham St. on Lake Mendota.
1934 Northwest
In the mid 1930s, stern steerers were still the only class that sailed in the Northwest. The 1934 Northwest A class title was captured by the Four Lakes Ice Yacht Club FRITZ, a boat built by Frank Tetzlaff, owned by Fritz Jungbluth, and piloted that year by Carl Bernard. The boat would go on to win the Northwest A Stern Steerer title for a total of 7 times. There’s enough history about this boat for a book to be written. Here are some articles about that regatta and links to some history. Apologies for not having the time this morning to write a more deserving in depth report on this boat.
1938 Northwest
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1938 Northwest: Oshkosh to Madison
The photo above is the starting point and inspiration for this week’s edition of Northwest Regatta Throw-Back-Thursday. That’s Skeeter Ice Boat Club’s Harry Melges (you may have heard of his son, Buddy) in front of H.V. Fitzcharles of Chicago on Lake Mendota. The Northwest was supposed to have started on Saturday, January 15 at Oshkosh but a heavy snow storm forced a postponment. The local newspaper wrote in a way all too familiar for those who enjoy this sport, “Oshkosh lost another regatta through an uncompromising Weather Man who has played a ‘dirty trick’ on the city and and particularly its iceboaters.”
Two weeks later, the regatta relocated to Lake Mendota. Harry Melges did win a trophy that year, but not in the E Skeeter. He sailed the Lake Geneva A stern steerer, KOL-MASTER, to victory. The Wisconsin State Journal reported that there was a controversy about “ships sailing out of their class”. You can that article here.
New! ISA News & Views Newsletter Archive
