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Since the major reason for forming an ice yacht club is to provide the pleasure of sailing an ice yacht, a few comments about ice yachting seem in order. Michael Timm gave the club a photocopy of a reprint of articles that appeared in "Scribner's Monthly" magazine in 1881. The reprint was in the 1/15/90, 1/30/90, and 2/15/90 issues of "Messing Around In Boats." The first article, "Ice-Yachting on the Hudson," expands at some length on the art of sailing on the Hudson River where the ice was seldom smooth, being marred by cracks, by mounds thrust up by pressure from below, and by large cakes of ice that had been shoved onto the regular ice. Another feature of ice sailing is that the yacht can go much faster than the speed of the wind. As the article explains in detail, the forward speed is mainly limited by wind friction on the forward side of the sails. The distance from Poughkeepsie to New Hamburg is a little more than seven miles. A good ice boat could make the distance in seven minutes; a slower one in nine.
The second article, "How to Build an Ice Yachtm" gives detailed instructions for building a fifty-foot long ice yacht. The design is somewhat different from the faster ice yachts that were soon to be built. The length over-all was fifty feet five inches and was said to be medium size. The article states, "Mr. Jacob E. Buckhout, of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., builds such a boat for four hundred and fifty dollars."
However, just two years earlier, the design of ice boats was changed. (Raymond A. Ruge, "Iceboating on the Hudson River," Fall 1974 issue of NAHO, the New York State Museum's quarterly bulletin) Prior to 1879 the fastest ice boat on the river was John A. Roosevelt's "Icicle." She was 69 feet 10 inches in overall length and carried over 1,000 square feet of sail. In that year H. Relyea of Catskill built the "Robert Scott," surpassing the speed of every other iceboat built up to that time. He replaced the heavy framework of timbers and wooden side-rails with a single long center timber, and steel guy wires to keep it square with the runner-plank. He also reduced the size of the jib and brought the sail's center of effort further forward, where it was resisted by the main runners, instead of partially by the rudder as before. The reduction in weight and improvement in control was a real breakthrough, and with very few exceptions, all iceboats built along the Hudson were "Scott" boats or "wire boats," as distinguished from the earlier "side-rail" or "wishbone" type.
"With only two-thirds the sail area, the "Robert Scott" soundly beat the great "Icicle," so it was no surprise when Commodore Roosevelt ordered a new "Icicle" from the great Poughkeepsie builder, Jacob Buckhout, to be of Scott design."
The second "Icicle" was 49 feet 6 inches long with 735 square feet of sail and was reputed to have sailed at 100 miles per hour. She had a long career and, for a long time, was in the basement of the Roosevelt Memorial Library in Hyde Park Now it is in the Maritime Museum in Kingston. . In 1903 the second "Icicle" and her owner, John A. Roosevelt, were listed as belonging to the Carthage Ice Yacht Club.
In 1994, Reid Bielenberg, the secretary of the Hudson River Ice Yacht Club (HRIYC) said that his club was formed in 1881. (Alec Applebaum, "Ice sailing takes to the river," The Independent, Feb. 10, 1994.) After World War I the club disbanded (Matthew E. Mantell, "Captains of Winter Sail Hudson's Frozen Waters," New York Times, Feb. 26, 1995). However due to the efforts of Raymond Ruge, a Cornwall, N.Y. architect and a former Chelsea Yacht Club member, there was a renaissance in the 1960's. "When he died in 1985, Ray had transformed the sport from a millionaire's hobby to a recreation for local townspeople. And he also left the HRIYC a legacy of restored ice boats."
Most ice-boat racing is now done on lakes such as Orange Lake, Greenwood Lake, and Saratoga Lake. There is a regatta on the Hudson in Tivoli Bay when the ice is more than ten inches thick, but it is more of a social event than a racing meeting.
The Pughkeepsie Journal for February 22, 2001 shows a photograph of the ice boat "Sweet Marie" sailing on the Hudson near Athens (Greene County). It is one of the historic ice boats being maintained by the members of the Hudson River Ice Yacht Club.
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