CLAIBORNE COVE, Maryland – Michael Keene grabs the wooden tiller of his ice boat, begins to push it across the ice and then leaps in as if he's launching a bobsled. Wind fills the white sail and his 12-foot polished wooden vessel accelerates towards the Chesapeake Bay.
The winds are light today, but the ice boat runs on narrow blades creating a near-frictionless ride. Keene, 61, is lying down in the cockpit as if piloting a luge. Soon, the boat is nearing 30 mph – three times the speed of a conventional sailboat on the water under this kind of wind.
"These conditions are really good," said Keene, referring to the stretch of subfreezing temperatures. "This is our 13th day on the ice, which is fantastic. Usually, we get two or three days and we're happy."
The deep freeze that recently gripped much of the country created some of the best conditions in decades for ice boating, an obscure and often thrilling sport.
This month, the North Shrewsbury Ice Boat & Yacht Club in Red Bank, New Jersey, held a regatta for 30-foot-plus ice yachts for the first time since 2003. Last month, Green Lake in Wisconsin, hosted the North American Championship for popular "DN" ice boats, which came out of a design contest by the Detroit News in the 1930s.
The winner in Wisconsin: an ice boater from Poland.
When the temperatures plunged below freezing last month, sailors here on Maryland's Eastern Shore literally dusted off their ice boats and pulled them out of sheds and garages. They set up a dozen boats along this cove off the Chesapeake Bay, where the brackish waters don't often freeze. Some days as many as 100 people came to watch the sleek crafts glide across the mirror-like surface.
"I've never seen this in my life," said Rahul Wankhede, who is in his forties, from central India and now works as a bartender at a hotel south of here. "I FaceTimed my parents and showed them and they were quite amazed."
Sailors here were out on the ice as often as possible, trading tips and offering rides to anyone interested. Xingqin Feng, who is from southwest China and studying for her CPA test here, jumped at the chance.
The cockpit only seats one, so Feng kicked her feet up on the boat's fuselage. She sat on a wooden plank and gripped one of the wires that holds up the mast. If she'd let go, Feng would've fallen off and gone sliding across the ice.
Before she arrived at the cove, Feng said she was a little scared.
"I thought, 'What if the ice broke and what if it's too fast?'" said Feng, 50. Afterwards, she said the ride was fun and exciting.
Ice boaters like Claiborne Cove because the ice is smooth and thick, at least 8 inches, and the water shallow. At low tide, it is just a foot deep.
Ice boating dates to the 1600s or 1700s, depending on the historian. The North Shrewsbury Club says it originated in the Netherlands in the eighteenth century as a form of transporting goods over ice.
People have been sailing iceboats on the Chesapeake Bay for more than a century. A black and white photo at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels, Maryland, shows men in jackets, ties and wool caps during the 1910s, skating as an iceboat glides past.
These days ice boaters wear puffy down coats, face coverings for the wind, and sometimes ski helmets for safety. Among the ice boaters on the cove was Dr. David Tuel, 72, a retired orthopedic surgeon from western Maryland.
Last year, Tuel and a friend were sailing on a lake there when they crashed head-on at 40 miles an hour. Tuel says the other boat disintegrated, but neither sailor was injured.
Watching ice boats is entertaining, even when they crash.
"My wife was filming my first crash, she saw me go over, saw me roll out, and I asked her, 'Why didn't you come and help me?'" said Tuel. "She says, 'It was almost too much fun filming you.'"
The last day of this year's ice boating season on Claiborne Cove was Monday, just before the temperatures were set to rise and turn the smooth surface to slush. Jim Richardson, 78, lives in a house overlooking the cove, but was stuck inside.
Earlier this ice boating season, he was sailing between 35 and 40 miles an hour when he realized he was speeding towards the rocks on shore. Richardson put his foot out to slow down and broke his ankle. He's now on a walker.
How was the ride going before the crash?
"Absolutely wonderful," said Richardson, grinning. "That's why we do this. Once you get your first taste of it, it's hard to forget."
NPR National Desk Intern Anusha Mathur contributed to this story.
Copyright 2026 NPR
