- Man: 2-5-5,
5-3-4,
2-0-5,
3-3-8.
- Whitehorse: It's the sport that no one knows about.
[laughs]
You're on a... basically, looks like a coffin
with a cross plank,
and some skates, or runners as people call them,
and you let the wind blow you across.
[wind rustling]
- Man: Go! - Whitehorse: Go, go, go!
[blades thunder and rasp on ice]
[ethereal music]
[wind sweeping]
- Man: Whoa!
- Whoa-ho!
My name is Deb Whitehorse.
If I have to talk about myself, [laughs]
I can tell you about iceboating.
I can, you know, bore you for hours about it.
Oh, yeah.
There's my dad.
My dad, David Roston, lived on Lake Monona,
and everybody who lived on Monona had an iceboat,
and same with Mendota, I'm sure.
My dad always kept a scrapbook.
A lot of ice boaters did.
The sport received a lot of press coverage
in the newspapers.
It was front-page news.
Eventually, that changed, and I realized that, "Well,
we have to tell our own story now."
I taught myself how to create websites.
iceboat.org went online in November 1998.
I think we've had almost 3 million visitors since then.
Started working race committee for regattas.
Stand by, stand by!
- Announcer: Silver fleet to the line!
- Deb: When you start a race,
you have to have a writer and a caller,
and I have my clipboard.
I think all scorers like to have
their own kind of pencil or pen they use.
So then, I have someone
stand there and call out the sail numbers...
- Voice: 255-205-534.
- Deb: ...on each lap as they go around.
Generally, they do three laps, sometimes four.
I take a picture of the finish,
and I email it or text it to a tabulator,
and then results are posted instantly on the Internet.
I'm really happy when I can do a regatta with no mistakes.
- This is-- - A slide for the...?
- Right here, Jerry.
It's what you bury in the hull here.
- I guess I've known people in our Four Lakes Ice Yacht Club.
You know, they are my second family.
[laughing] People who like to build things.
They are constantly working on their boats like my father did.
- You know, he's got that fancy chalk system.
- Yeah, do you know how that works?
There's a... There's a trick.
- When you go to regatta, I've said this,
it's like a family reunion.
It's the same thing of getting back together and seeing,
you know, "Oh, there's Fred over there."
You know, "Let's go see what he's up to."
I'm with my friends, and we just have so much fun.
[gentle music] [ice scraping]