Chickawaukie Ice Boat Club

We’ve received word that Fred Kircheis had a stroke in his sleep early Thursday morning. No news on his situation, but our thoughts are with Fred and his family, and wishes for s full recovery. Iceboating buddy Bruce Brown is helping with the details. Ironically, Rick Williams was scheduled to pick up Fred’s DN that very morning having bought it a few days earlier. Not sure if the two events are related…

Down at the Connecticut Ice Yacht Club, Joe Kolodej was seriously injured at work and a fundraiser has been organized by George Neysson. Lots of us build things and use tools, so its always useful to try and understand how these accidents happen. All the best from Maine, Joe!

https://www.freefunder.com/campaign/Kolodej-Fundraiser—CIYC Dave Danielson fills in the details:

I spoke with Joe for about 15 minutes the day after he got back home. Joe was at Cedar Island Marina in Clinton, CT. working on a Silverton 42. The boat was out of the water. He went below decks to do some welding believing the boat had been vented. When he began there was an explosion. He told me he wasn’t sure whether it was fuel or propane that caused it. He was able to get back on deck but the ladder had fallen away from the boat. Someone heard the explosion and came to help him. His right arm was badly damaged. He told me his hand was just hanging, his thumb wasn’t in the right place (his words) and blood was pulsing out of the arm. He was immediately wrapped up with boat yard shrink wrap to contain the flow and rushed to Yale/New Haven.

He told me the emergency room was full of doctors and nurses to stabilize him. There were 2 more surgeries: the first to determine the extent of damage and another to do skin grafts. He has pins in every finger on his right hand and has a pump hooked up to take care of drainage, I assume. He has a nursing service coming to the house as well and is on 2 kinds of pain killers and still not very comfortable.

I haven’t talked to him again yet; thought I’d let him settle in a bit. I don’t think he’s very comfortable recounting the incident. I know I wouldn’t be either. It sounds like he’s worried whether he will be able to use the hand and arm. He also sounds like he’s not sure what will happen from a legal standpoint, if anything; it’s still being investigated by the local police dept.

He’s guessing it will be at least a 6 months recovery period; probably what the doctors told him. That’s all I have at the moment. I’m really grateful to George for setting up the fundraiser. Joe might have rejected such a thing but I’m sure he’s going to need some backup funds down the road. I’m hoping that we can raise a large sum to take that worry out of the equation. And, at the same time, let him know his friends are with him on the way to a full recovery, if possible.

Take a break from the stress of election coverage and gaze upon this pastoral. Then take yourself quietly to bed, carrying the image carefully in your cerebral cortex. You will have a wonderfully peaceful night’s sleep dreaming ice.

This was taken by Denis Geurtin today just across the border in Quebec. Depending on the outcome of the election, there may be other reasons besides the ice to take up residence there.

We had a good turnout of 20 members from newbies just about to build to our senior member Fred Wardwell who says he has been iceboating for 89 years starting as a small child. New member Ryan Haskell and his wife Heather are about to build, they have daughters 8 and 10 who may get sidecared or he may build an Opti. He is an IT person and has finished the new webcam for the launch site at Damariscotta Lake that will have a time lapse record of each day’s weather. He demo’d that on his smart phone, very cool. Thank you Ryan.

Treasurer’s report from Jim Gagnon (P.O. Box 463, West Boothbay, ME, 04575) ; $2700 in the bank, annual expenses around $1000 at the moment. Dues are due for 2017, send $20 to Jim.

The board of directors are unchanged and they have appointed the officers of the club, also unchanged.

President Buchholz reported on our first 100 mile race, not 50 miles out and back as the big boats used to do on the Hudson but 12 laps around an 8 mail course up on one of the Canadian lakes, we could do it in Maine. The biggest problem for the skippers was counting laps.

Buchholz also suggested we try an orienteering kind of treasure hunt on ice, details to be worked out. Perhaps each skipper would put out a clue. Each clue, to be found in order, would have instructions to the next one. After the clues were laid out I guess every body comes back to home, perhaps eats lunch, and then each goes to the one they planted and the through the numerical sequence and off they go in all directions until they have found them all. The hope is that any iceboat could enter and everyone would have a good time sailing all over the place both in the before lunch setting clues and the after lunch trying to find them. Each skipper would know the location of the clue he set out but not know where in the sequence of clues his known one is. There might be some entertaining element of confusion. Who writes the clues?

The pres. has been designing wind breaker CIBC jackets and caps for purchase by members, contact him for details “hilltop@midcoast.com”. He presented complimentary jackets to the Treas. and Sec. and Web designer John Stanton in acknowledgement of their loyal services. We will add the duty of models to our job descriptions. We appreciate the gesture, they are nice jackets.

Buchholz pointed out that our web site “iceboat.me” is the club archive. There was discussion of possible use of these records of where and when we have sailed over the recent years perhaps along with instructions or GPS coordinates to launch sites. Here is a worthwhile project that is season and weather independent. Any takers?

We usually grill something for the pot luck lunch after the meeting but we forgot to light the grill before the meeting. As usual there was plenty of good food to eat anyway.

The next turn out will be on the ice. The traditional first weekend of December on Plymouth Pond might be a week or two later due to the mild Fall. Maine is in drought since summer, several inches of rain have not been delivered and the lakes are at the lowest levels in 50 years. Beware of never before seen rocks.

Secretary Roberts

He’s getting warmed up!

ODE TO NOVEMBER

It’s early November, the leaves are half down
Some folks have the blues, some soon will leave town

But an iceman’s keen memory brings up the years
when–against all the odds–this month banished our fears

By heading far North, or a longish cold snap
we rigged up the boats, and shot out on the black

This Fall I’ve been wondering, is there still strength to frig?                                                 can I hoist that tall mast? can I back up the rig?

There’s a grace in the quitting, before winding down
I’ll go traveling with sweetie, we’ll get out of town

So I wandered on over, to a wizard near-by
as you open his shop-door, you can’t guess what you’ll spy

There gleamed a new iceboat, so small and so bold
which he claimed he was building for a friend growing old. 

A friend who’s downsizing, yet won’t lay out in the blast
who’s fed up with trailers, but hates to come last

And just as the bait tasted sweet ‘tween my teeth
I felt a sharp hook, that lay buried beneath.

That wise man downsizing, who’s lightening the gear
I know him already: he’s standing right here!

A quick calculation: Sell this and sell that
I could have this new boat, and still die standing pat.

Would that free-standing mast–it looks good here on land-                                                 like others I know grow limp on demand?

Would she slither to windward, slicker than sleet?
Would she hike in a puff, could she harry the fleet?

November’s reborn now, the cruise ship’s on hold
I’m buying new gloves, lifting weights as of old

My obsession’s come back now, and the ending I crave:
Leaping–spread-eagled!–right into the grave

Tom Hysop reminisces after the recent death of Bill Perrigo, iceboating legend:

When it came to ice boating, family patriarch Bill ‘Curley’ Perrigo was definitely what you would call ‘old school’. I remember seeing him on the ice at the end of a hard day of sailing with his face bloodied and raw from being exposed to the stinging ice chips and the bitter wind. (I would be thinking to myself; ‘Man, if this is what it takes, I don’t know if I want to do it”!)

Popular theory in those days was that you had to feel the wind on your face in order to find the best possible way around the race course.

I don’t know for sure, but I would bet that Bill Perrigo never spent much time thinking about full-face helmets, or worse, enclosed cockpits (egad!!!), on ice yachts. As far as wind chill goes… forget about it.

Perrigo was more than a tough ice boater however, he was a damn good one too. Regatta wins in both the Northwestern and the ISA, along with victories in the Ice Yacht Challenge Pennant of America races, would appear on his ice yachting resume before he hung up his goggles for good.

His championship winning E Skeeter back in the fifties and early sixties had what I always considered to be the greatest name ever hung onto an ice yacht, Thunder Jet

Nearly forty years have passed since the last time I’ve seen that boat on the ice, and yet the name Thunder Jet can still stir up images of a fleet of bright white sails flying over a frozen surface at some long ago regatta.

Thunder Jet, as I was to learn later listening to the stories Bill Mattison, Jack Ripp, and others would tell of our sport’s past, was really one tank of an Skeeter ice boat. Built heavy to begin with, on windy days its sleek fuselage was further strained by the rumored hundreds of pounds of lead that Perrigo would casually toss in the cockpit before shoving off. Thunder Jet was not built for gentle breezes, it wasn’t made for medium conditions, and ‘building for the average’ wasn’t part of the game plan. Thunder Jet was built for when the wind was howling and it took a genuine set of brass ones to park your butt in a Skeeter ice boat and yank really hard on the go fast rope.

As legend has it, Perrigo’s Thunder Jet was always the last boat off the starting line and usually the last boat to round the top mark. The quicker, (but not necessarily faster), Skeeters would jump out to what seemed to be insurmountable leads. But if it was windy enough soon Thunder Jet could be seen ripping through a fifty boat field like a sharp saw blade through dry sitka.

By the second lap Perrigo would be mid-pack, by the third he’d be battling for the lead, and by the last lap Perrigo and Thunder Jet would be showing a rapidly disappearing stern to the rest of the frustrated Skeeter fleet.

Even though thirty-five mph wind speeds were perfectly acceptable in those days, most regattas weren’t sailed in hurricane like conditions.

But apparently a few were, as Perrigo captured three Northwestern Regatta titles, (1950, 1952, and 1958), two International Skeeter Association championships, (1958 and 1964), to go along with three successful efforts in the Ice Yacht Challenge Pennant of America series, (1953, 1955, and 1961).

One of Bill Perrigo’s last great ice yachting triumphs came in the Challenge Pennant races sailed on Lake Mendota in March of 1970.

The 4LIYC had won the Pennant in 1964, and successfully defended it for the next five years. Indeed, few thought that the Pennant races of 1970 would produce anything other than a 7th straight 4LIYC victory.

But the Pewaukee Ice Yacht Club had different ideas.

In their bid to wrestle the Pennant away from the 4LIYC, Pewaukee decided to send Art Jark’s lightening fast, ex-Bill Mattison Honeybucket, now named the Nancy E III, to Madison as one of it’s challenging yachts.

And Art Jark promptly tapped Bill Perrigo to steer ft.

The Pennant title came down to the last race of the series that year. 4LIYC’s Dave Rosten, expertly piloting his Skeeter, Pirate, appeared to be headed for victory. But as the long, ten lap, twenty mile race wound down the wind began to pick up. The light snow that had fallen on and off throughout the day began to be blown around at the ice surface.

Soon the swirling snow built to almost surreal white-out conditions. All you could see of the boats racing around the course were the top four or five feet of the mast and sail. Finding the marks in these unbelievably dangerous conditions was next to impossible. On the last lap of the race Rosten could not find the top mark.

Somehow, Perrigo did.

A few minutes later the race scorers and other on-lookers were shocked to see Jark’s V-69, with Bill Perrigo at the helm, streaking toward the finish line.

The Ice Yacht Challenge Pennant of America went to Pewaukee.

Under the toughest of conditions, Bill Perrigo proved how tough he was.

The piece was written by Greg Whitehorse.