MCA HUT! Archive

They say that to every thing there is a season. The flip side of that, of course, is that to every thing there is an off season, too. And December just isn’t the best season for messin’ around with boats in Minnesota.

Early December was when Charlie invited me to go up north to the cabin with him one year. That bein’ such an in-between time as far as outdoor sports go, I accepted. I did think it was kinda odd that Charlie asked me to bring up both my old canoe and my ice skates. But there’s no accountin’ for Charlie. So I brought ‘em both. I figured I could always say no to whatever it was later on.

Ice skates seemed the better choice when I arrived. Freeze-up had already progressed miles to the south. There was even a little snow on the ground, though the lake ice was still, for the most part, blown clear. I had no idea what Charlie wanted with the canoe. But at least it looked like the skatin’ would be good.

Charlie was hatchin’ a more grandiose scheme than that, though. Somewhere he’d seen video of folks out ice boating-sailing on a frozen lake-and thought it looked like fun. He was proposin’ we give it a try.

I sensibly pointed out that an ice boat was a rather specialized piece of equipment—and one that we didn’t have. But Charlie seemed to think that was a minor problem a little Yankee ingenuity could solve. I thought about pointin’ out that neither of us was, strictly speaking, a Yankee. But I figured that would be a wasted argument.

Anyway, that was what Charlie wanted with my canoe; to turn it into an ice boat. Now, I have a certain, foolish fondness for my old Core Craft and I wasn’t gonna surrender it lightly to misuse, however amusing. So I argued that Charlie’s old Grumman was built more like an ice skate: we oughta use that instead. But Charlie insisted that this was maybe the only time when three keels would be better than one. He said we’d never be able to keep the Grumman upright on the ice on that one keel unless, of course we had two of ‘em to put together side by side to make a kind of a catamaran ice boat. But that would be way too complicated. And besides, we didn’t have a second keeled aluminum boat anyway. So we’d have to use mine. It was all a matter of balance and stability, he said. I got lost somewhere in the middle of that argument. But I could see that balance and stability were a potential problem here. I just wasn’t necessarily thinkin’ of the boats.

The upshot was, we dragged my old canoe out onto the ice of the windswept lake and tried to rig a sail in it. We had done this before, on long stretches of open water when we had a following wind. We hadn’t done it very often, mind you, tail winds for paddlers bein’ in such chronic short supply as they are. But we had done it. And it had even worked well enough.

So Charlie brought out an old tarp, a couple of paddles, and some line and we rigged our makeshift canoe sailing rig with ‘em. Then we sat down in the canoe with the biting December wind at our backs, hoisted our sail, and waited hopefully for the wind to fill it.

It was an uneventful wait. Even with the wind howlin’ full force against our surrogate sail, we didn’t so much as budge. There we sat, two middle-aged guys in parkas and insulated pac boots, sittin’ in a canoe out on the ice, wavin’ a tarp around in the wind. We didn’t much look like speed-demon ice boaters. We looked more like we were tryin’ to flag down a passing snowmobiler for a tow.

Charlie suggested I get out and give us a push to help us get started. Then our ersatz ice boat went about three inches farther than I pushed it before grinding to a halt again. Even without my extra weight, there was just too much friction on the hull and too little force on the sail to let us go glidin’ across the ice. Not that the wind wasn’t doin’ its part. The wind chill was doubtless far the wrong side of zero.

At this point, I was more than willing to go inside for hot cider and call it a day. But Charlie was not so easily deflected from his purpose. As he grudgingly started to disentangle the tarp from the paddles, he asked me if I’d go get our ice skates. I was only too happy to oblige. Seemed like a nice change of pace.

But ice skatin’ still wasn’t the next item on Charlie’s agenda. After I’d dragged my canoe off to safety and returned with the skates, I could see he was still obsessed with the idea of jury-rigging some kind of an ice boat. And ice boat Mach II promised to be even more interesting than the earlier prototype.

Charlie had gone and dragged out his nephew’s sail boat. It was a cute little thing. Big enough for two, as long as the two were on reasonably good terms with one another, it was only slightly bigger than your average sail board. But with its flat bottom and no keel or even dagger board, it seemed to have even more ice boat potential than my old Core Craft ever had. I approved: at least it wasn’t my boat bein’ sacrificed.

Charlie’d also brought out a couple of 1x4’s and proceeded to wedge an ice skate onto either end of each piece of lumber, impaling the skate between blade and boot sole. He pushed the skates together until they were about sailboat-width apart. Then he set the sailboat on top of this little wooden platform, one skate-equipped timber fore and one aft, and invited me aboard.

I figured, what the heck: we were probably not goin’ anywhere anyway. And I got in. Sure enough, we raised the sail and moved only a couple of skidding, shuddering feet before grinding to a halt again. Seemed our ice boat had weak ankles. Left to their own devices on their 1x4 perches, the skates had yawed in every possible direction, edging into the ice and making very effective brakes.

Mr. Yankee Ingenuity had an answer to that, though. He fetched out the line he had taken off our improvised, canoe sailing rig and lashed the skates securely into an obediently upright position. Then we tried it one more time.

This time when we raised the sail, we actually moved. And we kept on moving, accelerating over the patches of bare ice and decelerating sharply each time we crossed a drifted ridge of snow. It wasn’t exactly smooth sailing. But we were bein’ propelled non-stop across the ice by the wind. Believe it or not, we were ice boatin’. And it was even kinda fun.

Now that we had achieved our objective, hurtlin’ across the ice ahead of a stiff winter wind, I had a few moments to reflect that the real difficulty with this whole enterprise didn’t lie in the shortcomings of Yankee ingenuity or patched-together equipment. I may be pretty proficient with whatever type of paddle you might wanna put into my hands. And Charlie, he’s an able and experienced paddling partner whether you put him in the bow or the stern. But neither one of us knows the first thing about sailing.

So once we had committed ourselves to flyin’ across the ice, our choices were pretty limited. We just ran with the wind down the lake, straight toward the farthest shore. We had just a few minutes to sit back and enjoy the ride before we ran outta ice.

Now, I doubt that even a seasoned sailor coulda turned the contraption we were on. But that was small consolation as our ride came to its abrupt and decisive end. The bow skates stopped cold when they hit the snowy lakeshore. Inertia kept the sailboat in motion just a fraction of second longer, skiddin’ it offa the 1x4s and smack into a little drift of snow. Charlie and I kept our seats but found ourselves slidin’ into the bow of the boat, temporarily too cozy for comfort. And suddenly the cost/benefit ratio for that ride seemed a tad high.

Charlie dropped sail on our ice boatin’ adventure and we clambered out of the wreck of the Ice Boat Mach II. Charlie seemed to have slaked his thirst for ice boating at this point. Either that or he realized that neither one of us knew how to tack back up into the wind even if we coulda figured out how to turn a boat on skates. ‘Cause he untied the skates, pitched the 1x4s into the sailboat, and tied two long lengths of line around the mast. We laced our skates on our feet, where they belonged to begin with, and proceeded to tow the boat by the lines back up the lake, like a fan team of tired sled dogs.

And you know, by the time we were done man-haulin’ that sailboat upwind to the cabin, even Charlie was ready to agree: December’s not the best season to be messin’ around with boats in Minnesota.

Well, ‘til next time, keep your paddle wet. And keep in touch. Drop me a line c/o Rich Furman and Morgan MacBain, 901 East Geranium Avenue, St. Paul MN 55106 or editor@canoe-kayak.org. Let me know what sort of alternative boating activities you’ve experienced in the off season. Remember, Uncle Wally promises to 1) tell the truth so no one would ever believe it anyway and 2) never reveal your true identity to anyone, not even the National Ski Patrol.