How to Ride Mosquitoes

Winter brings out the hero in some people. The first snowfall sends them schussing wildly down some precipitous slope, and the first freeze finds them strapping skates on wobbly ankles and pretending they are Gordie Howe. But of all the sundry forms of midwinter madness, nothing quite matches that of the iceboater. He may spend the summer sprawling in the cockpit of a Star or Lightning, watching the waves lap gently against his hull, sniffing the sea breeze, and reading John O'Hara. But just let the water turn to ice. Out come the brandy, the long Johns, the parka and the racing goggles--and, lordy, watch his smoke.

Racing the Express. Iceboating is the fastest of all winter sports. In the 1870s, wealthy New York sportsmen got their kicks racing express trains along the Hudson River shore, and in 1908, a New Jerseyite named Elisha Price piloted his ice yacht Clarel to a speed record of 140 m.p.h. But iceboats soon yielded to icebreakers and year-round commerce on the Hudson, and the sport mostly moved West--to the Great Lakes, Wisconsin and Minnesota. The great (up to 68 ft.) old ice yachts that carried more than 1,000 square feet of sail gave way to light, one-or two-man boats that could be bought for as little as $450 and transported atop the family car. Today's iceboats, with their needle-thin outriggers, look more like mosquitoes than sailboats. But a 10-m.p.h. breeze is all it takes to send them skit tering across the ice at 50 m.p.h., and speeds of 100 m.p.h. are common.

Last week on Michigan's Lake St. Clair, William R. Perrigo, 46, climbed into the cockpit of his 24-ft. Thunder Jet and rocketed around an eight-mile course to win the International Skeeter Class championship. A printing-company president, former commodore of Wisconsin's Pewaukee Ice Yacht Club, Bill Perrigo sails a 38-ft. Inland Scow in the summers, is an expert on both water and ice. But stepping from one to the other, he says, is a little bit like a glider pilot learning to blast off in a jet. While he was practicing three weeks ago, his Skeeter hit a hidden "pressure heave" in the ice. One runner snapped off and flew back--and that accounts for the 15 stitches in Perrigo's face.

Catching a Vacuum. An iceboat travels fastest across the wind--on what sailors call "a reach." Its speed results from the sail's efficiency as an airfoil --something like the wing on an airplane. Sailing directly downwind, an iceboat cannot exceed the wind's speed. On a reach, though, the wind produces a vacuum on the lee of the slightly slanting sail. This results in a strong forward force. As the sail pushes forward trying to eliminate the vacuum, an iceboat can attain fantastic speeds --up to five times the actual wind velocity. The ice sailor hauls in the sheet for more and more zip, aims his boat with a tiller that controls the front runner. Then, sometimes, he prays.

After his first hair-raising sail across the ice, one novice shakily reported: "Riding an iceboat in a stiff breeze is no more dangerous or uncomfortable than driving a truck 90 miles an hour down a steep, wet hill with the wheels loose, no brakes, and pieces of the windshield flying back into your face." Unseen cracks in the ice can capsize an iceboat in the flick of an eyelash; just clipping a stray beer can left by some thoughtless ice fisherman can send the sensitive craft careening crazily out of control.

But serious accidents are remarkably rare, and enthusiasts insist that the sport is safer than skating, say, or skiing. They casually shrug off such occupational hazards as frostbite and injury from ice chips flung back by the razor-sharp front runner. "Many racers, including myself, have little blotches on the face where blood vessels have broken," says Chicago's Jane Pegel, 30, who won the national DN Class championship in 1960 and 1963. She spurns the use of a knitted face mask because she claims it interferes with her judgment of wind conditions.

The risks and discomforts are small enough price for the thrill of a bone-rattling run over perfect ice. Says W. Tyson Dominy, a Long Island lab technician who has been sailing iceboats for 28 years: "When you're sailing close-hauled to the wind with the runners screaming just a few inches below the iceboat's hull, piling on breeze and speed, with the frozen bay stretched out open and free for miles ahead--well, once you've felt that sensation, you come back to do it again and again."

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