Ice boating, “the most fun you can have with your clothes on”
By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor
This winter you’ll see ice boats cruising along frozen West Grand Traverse Bay or Lake Leelanau on a clear, windy day.
Their sails are propelled by wind like normal boats. But these crafts face no friction from waves or currents. They can move at three or four times the wind speed.
“I’m sure motorcyclists say the same thing. It’s the most fun you can have with your clothes on. It’s adrenaline,” says David Hill, a Leelanau County native who credits ice boating with helping him survive the winter in northern Michigan.If you’re going 40-50 knots across the ice, everything else just melts away.”
Hill manages the Facebook page called Leelanau Cruisers and Sparbenders. It’s a forum for local ice boaters to share weather conditions and plan their next excursions.
His father Gary introduced him to ice boating when he was a teenager.
“I thank my dad for that, sometimes I curse him, because it can consume my life,” says Hill.
Now his 5-year-old and 8-year-old are excited about ice boating, as well.
“They say ‘Be careful, daddy,’ but that’s usually followed by, ‘Can we come too?’” says Hill. “With any luck they’ll fall in love like I did with it and we can sail together.”
Hill says that sailing mechanics are similar to a soft-water sailboat. But things on the ice happen faster on the ice than they do on the water.
His boat resembles an elongated tripod with three runners that have ice skates underneath them. The front runner is used to steer the boat. The oblong cockpit sits on a plane which is perpendicular to the back runners.
Each boat is designed to offer as little friction as possible where it touches the ice. A boat weighs somewhere between 60 and 110 pounds.
In a good winter, Hill and his fellow ice boaters can ply their trade until March or even April. Last March, spring was arriving with green grass, birdsong and warming temperatures. Still, the ice on much of Lake Leelanau and other inland lakes was still 12 inches thick. Temperatures still dipped below freezing at night. That made it safe for ice boating.
“When conditions are right, on this part of the lake, to see a car coming out of Leland and basically race it,” says Hill. “Some days you’re overtaking the car, some days just keeping up with it.”
Sometimes the ice boaters start before Christmas on small inland lakes like Glen Lake. They use Facebook or text messages to communicate about wind and ice conditions. Then they pick a day and meet at a common location.
Because the sport can be dangerous, Hill said you never boat alone.
I caught up with Hill and other ice boaters this past March 25, a Monday morning late in the season. The ice boaters pulled off M-22 at a spot on northern Lake Leelanau, near Leland.
The forecast called for windspeed of 15 knots, but it hadn’t arrived yet.
They knew that if they waited too long, the spring sun would melt surface ice and slow down their boats.
“Today is a race between the wind and the sun,” Hill said. “Under the sun, the first half inch becomes like a snow cone, putting your brakes on the boat.”
Safety always comes first out on the ice, where the wind blows hard and conditions can change fast.
Hill wears a helmet, padded clothing, safety ropes and a laniard around his neck with spikes. He could use those as hooks to pull himself back onto the ice if he ever went into the water.
That’s never happened before to him, but he has been catapulted from the boat when wind conditions changed quickly.
One of his buddies hit open water on West Grand Traverse Bay a few years ago and had to call 911 for help.
“You’re really at the mercy of it out there,” he says. “Especially with the amount of things that can go wrong with equipment failure.”
Just after we spoke, the wind picked up and he seized the opportunity. He stood on the boat with one foot and pushed off with the other.
The runners made a low rumbling sound as they moved along the ice. The boat’s lines began to flap. Suddenly the sale caught and filled with wind.
He was off, headed onto Lake Leelanau.
A version of this story aired on Interlochen Public Radio this past spring.
