A friend called me up and said: Andy the ice is amazing you need to get out here! It was a Tuesday and I’ve learned from past experiences that you take the time to sneak out whenever the ice is good. So lunch came and I left the office to go visit some friends and their iceboats along with all my iceboating gear. I regretfully didn’t have time to go grab my iceboat out of my basement. Just didn’t have that much of a head’s up, but folks graciously let me jump in and go. The last thing I heard Larry say before I he pushed me off in Pierre’s…

I sadly had an old iceboat I went out of my way on a three hour drive to pick up. It was the ugly girl at the prom. Too heavy, needed touching up, and frankly couldn’t give it away when the time came. I bought it from a guy on Cape Cod and didn’t realize my mistake until I was there to pick it up. It was my second boat and thought it would be a good loaner. It wasn’t. So it wasn’t a good loaner, I couldn’t give it away.. Literally… So I did the only thing I could do, I give it a worthy send off in a…

I got a call today from an iceboating buddy who set up his stern steerer on the lake.  There was no wind sadly but the sails where up and she was a sight to see! A stern steerer was the original iceboat.  Ice Yachts they were called.  Built like, steered like, and sailed similar to the sailboats they mimicked.    They where big, difficult to travel with and hard to set up without a lot of help.  But they were fast.  All that sail area, combined with weight for stability meant they went fast.   They also had the ability to hold two or three people. So in the 1930’s…