BY CHARLES LEDYARD NORTON.
ON a rocky promontory of the Hudson River, a few miles above Poughkeepsie, there stands, half hidden by the foliage in the summer, a long, low, neatly painted structure instantly suggestive to the nautically inclined of boats and their belongings.
But there is an unaccountable lack of the familiar characteristics of such localities. Even in midsummer there are few, if any, boats anchored in the cove, or hauled up on the shelving rock that serves in lieu of a beach. Through the open doors of the boat-house one may, perhaps, see certain varnishing and rigging operations under way. There are bundles of sails, coils of rope, rows of blocks, and long, curiously curved spars resting upon racks—long enough they are to serve as topgallant-yards for an old-fashioned man-of-war, but no ordinary sailorman would see any use for them with their nautically impossible curves and angles, and their unfamiliar and unshipshape attachments of galvanized iron.
This boat-house, however, is the headquarters of a yacht club that stands easily at the head of its class in all the world; but its fleet of racers is dismantled and laid aside in summers when other yachts are in the height of their glory. This fleet goes into commission only when the floating fields of new ice are fast welded together, and the river surface is solid from the Highlands to the Mohawk.
The Hudson River is by no means the only club, though it may not unfairly be designated as the leading one. At the neighboring towns of Poughkeepsie, New Hamburg and Newburg, and up stream at Hudson, Athens, Saugerties, Albany, and elsewhere, are other associations, with fleets of yachts always eager to try conclusions with their down-stream rivals. Poughkeepsie, and its immediate vicinity, however, has always been, and is likely to remain, the headquarters for ice-yachting.
This is due to several favorable conditions, natural as well as artificial. The river narrows and becomes tortuous at the Highlands—about forty miles from the sea—and this natural obstacle largely determines the permanency of ice in the river above. In a large stream the ice rarely forms across from shore to shore in a single night. It freezes in bands and patches, which become detached from the shore and float up and down with the tide until they become jammed and frozen together. North of the Highlands, too, the average winter temperature is considerably lower than it is to the southward, and sharp frosts come earlier and stay later. The beautiful and picturesque banks, moreover, have since early colonial times proved attractive to lovers of the country, and the riverside is for many miles almost continuously occupied by residents who have abundant means and leisure for such recreations as suit them best. Again, the great harvest field of the Hudson River ice-crop finds here its southernmost limit. At this point in the stream the admixture of sea-water renders the ice more or less unmarketable, and the ice-yachtsmen are therefore not so likely to be interfered with by the armies of men who are set to work by the great companies as soon as the ice is thick enough to pay for cutting and storage.
It is proverbial that no sooner is a good surface formed for ice-yachting than it is hopelessly buried under a shroud of snow; but here again nature comes to the rescue, for the latitude is far enough south to render alternations of frost and thaw probable all through the winter. Accordingly the white surface soon becomes streaked with gray, and ere long the yachtsman looks out of a morning and sees his highway once more practicable for steel runners.
This year engineering science has arrayed itself on the side of the yachtsman, and has built two huge piers in the river at Poughkeepsie. Primarily these are intended for the new cantilever railroad bridge, but incidentally they are welcomed by the winter-sailing clubs, because they will undoubtedly keep the ice in the river longer than it has heretofore been in the habit of staying. This is highly important in their eyes, for not infrequently there are cold “spells” in March which render the ice available for good sport, provided it could be held in position long enough to be temporarily re-frozen and prevented from floating away down stream on the ebb tide.
Despite all these favorable conditions, however, the goddess who presides over the destinies of ice-yachting is but a coy and fickle divinity. Sometimes she vouchsafes to her devotees not more than a day or two of sailing in an entire winter. Often she limits her favors to ten or fifteen days, and only at rare intervals does she smile upon them for thirty days, all told. The ice-yachtsman may, therefore, plume himself upon being the most select and exclusive of all sportsmen. He cannot, if he would, spend very much time en voyage, so he makes up for it as well as he may by contriving and perfecting all the details of his craft during her hours of enforced idleness. The result is that he has evolved a fabric that is a marvel of construction, adapted for lightness and strength in a wonderful degree.
Many of our readers have never seen an ice-yacht, but probably most of them have seen and made a common diamond-shaped kite—the simplest and easiest form of kite known to ingenious boyhood. This frame is in its general principles of construction identical with that of the modern ice-yacht, as shown in the working plans published herewith. The cross-piece corresponds with the runner-plank, the upright represents the center-timber, and the cord that passes around the whole is identical with the side-stays. (See Fig. 1.)