An iceboat (occasionally spelled ice boat or traditionally called an ice yacht) is a recreational or competition sailing craft supported on metal runners for traveling over ice. One of the runners is steerable. Originally, such craft were boats with a support structure, riding on the runners and steered with a rear blade, as with a conventional rudder. As iceboats evolved, the structure became a frame with a seat or cockpit for the iceboat sailor, resting on runners. Steering was shifted to the front.
Because of their low resistance to forward motion over ice, iceboats are capable of speeds exceeding . Because of their speed, iceboats are used both for recreation and for racing. Racing craft typically carry one person.
A related activity, land sailing, employs sailing craft similar to iceboats, but riding on wheels instead of runners.
History
The history of iceboating began in Europe in areas where smooth ice was found in the bays of the Baltic Sea and the canals of the Netherlands. Initially boats were used for commerce, but soon evolved into pleasure craft—"ice yachts". Ice sailing came to North America, where the sailing craft evolved into recreational and racing versions.
Venues
Iceboating began in the 17th century as a documented means of transport on the frozen Gulf of Riga and the canals of the Netherlands into the 18th century. Ice boats carried cargo on Dutch canals during the 17th century.
The first iceboats were introduced on New York State's Hudson River in the United States in 1790, where the practice flourished as a sport. The first recorded boat, built in 1790 by Oliver Booth of Poughkeepsie, was a square box atop three runners, the two forward runners being nailed to the box and the third acted as a rudder operated by a tiller. This type of craft was accessible to sportsmen of modest means.
In the mid-19th century, two "ice yachting" clubs had formed, the Poughkeepsie Ice Yacht Club (1865) and the Hudson River Ice Yacht Club (1870), where wealthy boat owners sailed large iceboats with up to seven crew members. Boats were as long as and sailed as fast as , a record exceeding any other conveyance in 1885, set by the Icicle. The first American Challenge Pennant occurred in 1881 on the Hudson river with five ice-yacht clubs competing. Races were sailed five times around a triangular course with one-mile legs, two of which were to windward. Iceboats were divided into four classes with sail areas ranging from less than 300 square feet to over 600 square feet.
By the beginning of the 20th century, iceboating had spread to Minnesota (Lake Minnetonka and White Bear Lake), Wisconsin (Lake Winnebago and Lake Pepin), Michigan (Lake St. Clair), and venues in Maine and Vermont. In Canada, there were venues on Lake Ontario (Kingston) and the Saint Lawrence River.
A European ice sailing club formed first in Sweden (1901), followed by the European Ice Yachting Union, which formed in 1928 with member states Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Sweden, Austria, and Germany.
Evolution of design
17th-century Dutch ice yachts consisted of flat-bottomed sailboats atop a cross-wise plank, resting on outboard metal runners, which carried the bulk of the weight of the craft. At the stern was a steering runner, attached to a rudder-like structure. to which are affixed four steel runners, one each at bow, stern and each end of the planking. These boats used conventional gaff mainsails and jibs, attached to the mast by travellers. A tiller or wheel stern controls the steering runner.
In the 19th century iceboats evolved into a box, riding on cross-pieces, supported by runners. These "stern-steerer" iceboats were generally rigged as sloops, with a jib sail forward of the mast, although the catboat style with a single sail was also used. In 1879 the archetypical Hudson River iceboat began to emerge. The Robert Scott, designed and built by H. Relyea, had a single backbone and wire guy-ropes. The mast on subsequent boats were stepped further forward than in the past with shortened jibs were shortened and the center of effort and resistance brought into balance, aligning both with the main runners. The shallow cockpit box became elliptical. A few "Class A'' stern steerers with at least of sail area survived in to the late 20th century.
In the early 1900s some smaller iceboats, called scooters, were designed to traverse both ice and water with a shallow, oval hull on fixed runners. These sailing craft were steered by manipulating the sails, there being no rudder.