When it’s finally cold enough to race

Luke Lawrence, often seen at the top of professional events, has heritage in hard water racing too as the New York Times reports:

It looked like a time warp on the frozen Navesink River in New Jersey: six hulking wooden iceboats, more than a century old, had gathered to race.

Two-man crews bundled like Arctic explorers stood by boats weighing half a ton, poised to push their vessels across the starting line.

And with a blast from a miniature cannon, the Van Nostrand Challenge Cup was on.

Some boats reared up perilously on two blades. Some stalled completely. But after decades of waiting, a grudge match dating to the late 1800s would be settled by antique wooden sailboats on steel blades racing along a frozen river in Red Bank, N.J. – Full report