Winter Sailing—Frostbite and Freez’n Fun

"Cold! If the thermometer had been an inch longer we'd all have frozen to death."
—Mark Twain and I, Opie Read

 Summer sailing season just wasn’t long enough! In the early 60s, my great friend, Lee Lyon, and I organized “frostbite sailing.” Each winter, we left a fleet of Butterfly sailboats at the Lotawana Yacht Club and every Sunday morning for three winters, no matter the weather, a group of seven or eight of us drove out from Kansas City together, rigged the boats, and sailed a series of short races, followed by liquid libation if our hands weren’t too numb to hold a drink. I remember one winter we never missed a weekend. A few times we broke thin ice to sail, but we got the job done.

We had some great competitive sailing. Of course, there was the danger of tipping over and ending up in the freezing water but, to the best of my knowledge, that never happened in these races. On a good Sunday, we could get in six or seven races. Because we sailed short races, we got the thrill of the start and the excitement of close-passing competitors more frequently than normal.

A typical sailboat race would be started by a committee boat, the boat where the members of the organizing committee watch and judge the race, setting a starting line between itself and a buoy that marks the other end of the line. A gun would be fired 10 minutes prior to the start, then five minutes and finally the starting gun. Everyone wanted to be as close to the starting line as possible when the final gun sounded without being over the line. If you jump the gun you had to go around the buoy and start over again, which meant you started last. We did not have the luxury of a committee, so we used what is called a rabbit start. In a rabbit start, one boat is designated the rabbit and crosses all the other boats in the fleet on port tack. They try to cross behind him as close as possible on starboard tack and, when the last boat has crossed the race is on.

It can get cold in Missouri. When the lake froze, we went ice boating. My boat, Freez’n Fun, was all black. On a good day I could hit 60 miles per hour. When you’re in the open wind and only six inches above the ice, 60 mph feels like the speed of light.

The days of great ice boating were few and far between as the conditions had to be just right. Not only must the lake be frozen solid, there couldn’t be too much snow on the ice, and there had to be enough wind. However, when it is good there isn’t anything more exciting. I can still hear the chatter of the ice boat runners digging into the ice.

Ice boating is much better on the northern lakes, where they have organized racing. The big boys have been known to hit 100! We raced a little, but the boats were all so different that it really wasn’t a race at all, still skimming across the ice at high speed is a thrill that I will always remember.

In addition to racing, we did drive our cars on the lake when it was really solid. One guy hit a thin patch of ice and his car fell through and he had to be rescued. You want that done quickly, as a man does not last long in 30° water. He was rescued, but how did he explain that loss to his insurance company?

When I was young, my family would occasionally stay at the lake house overnight during the winter. But, since the house got very little use during the colder months, the pipes were drained. This meant that in order to flush toilets we had to chop a hole in the ice, fill up buckets with water, and carry them up the hill. You really notice how much water is used when you have to do it that way. We had a rule that there was no flushing until something serious was deposited in the toilet.

There wasn’t a furnace, but my father solved that issue by building an airspace next to the fireplace flue that used a fan to pump hot air into the bedrooms. We were fairly comfortable even when the temperatures were near zero outside. And, when conditions were right, the ice-skating was phenomenal. 

What a pleasure it would be to return to those heady days!