By Carl Eisenberg
Iceboating is also known as hard water sailing. In the 1992 Winter edition of the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society’s newsletter, Soundings, Gene C. Harrison, quoted from the Encyclopedia Americana, Volume 14:
“It appears that the ingenious Dutch were the first iceboatmen, for in 1768, Fredrik Hendrik Chapman published a complete drawing of a dutch iceboat in his Architectura Navalis Mercatortia. . . . Oliver Booth sailed the frozen Hudson River at Poughkeepsie in 1790, in a small wooden box mounted on three iron runners and carrying a sprit sail.”
I’ve had only one ride on an iceboat, but I’ll never forget the ending. In 1973 at lunchtime at a seminar in Pewaukee, Wisconsin, attendees were invited to take a ride in an iceboat. Most chose to ride in one of the smaller boats, but I followed the famous sailor Buddy Melges and got a ride on a stern-steering iceboat whose hull was an old telephone pole. I sat in a metal cage structure fastened alongside the aft portion of the hull.
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We went really, really fast. At the end of the ride, Buddy told us he hadn’t been sure what would happen because the iceboat hadn’t sailed since it was lifted off the bottom of Pewaukee Lake where it had rested for a long time. Hearing that, I was delighted the iceboat had stayed in one piece while we were speeding over the frozen lake.
Recently I came across a video on iceboating from the Harken Manufacturing Company of Pewaukee. I think you’ll find it informative and exciting. The video features Steve Orlebeke, Harken director of engineering, talking about his “freaky fast” Class A Skeeter and his brand new DN, a popular iceboat.
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The photo at the top of this page is a still taken from the video at: https://fb.watch/3EX5eFR6B7/
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Carl Eisenberg is a sailor and birdwatcher, and served as president of the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society from 2016 – 2024. A retired pediatrician, he is a graduate of Duke University School of Medicine. He lives in Mequon, Wis.
