People of a certain age cannot help but get a little excited when the temperatures hold below freezing for more than three days. Will there be ice? We reminisce about the thick ice floes that piled in jagged heaps around the shore of Gardiner’s Bay, and about the annual iceboat races of the 1970s, and the time the entire South Fork fleet of iceboats was permitted to convene on Georgica Pond. Enthusiasts — Halseys, Hildreths, Rattrays — sailed on Sagg Pond, Poxabogue Pond, and Three Mile Harbor. The Mecox Ice Yacht Club even had a commodore, David Lee Brown, who marked safe courses for the DNs, Skeeters, Scooters, and Yankee fliers.
Did you know that the DN iceboat — 12 feet long with 60 square feet of sail, the amateur ice-sailor’s favorite racing machine — was named after The Detroit News newspaper? Iceboats and newspapers go together like cocoa and marshmallows; both, we venture to say, are wonders of American enterprise that are endangered in the unhealthy climate of the 2020s. Looking back at previous winter issues of The Star, we see the last mention of a Star staff member taking an iceboat ride was in 2015.
Well, sharpen your skates, East Hampton.
We’re not going to start honing and polishing the iceboat blades just yet, but if we’re not mistaken, there should be pond skating, at least, and perhaps there already was by the time this issue went to press yesterday evening.