Boating 101: Sailing On Ice? Yeah, That’s A Sport.

By Sarah Harris.

The minute I learned that ice sailing was an actual sport, I wanted to give it a try. I watched YouTube videos of wooden boats with big white sails zooming across the ice on steel runners. It seemed like such a rush: Imagine racing over a frozen lake on a wind-powered sled, hitting speeds that top 40 miles an hour.

So I was delighted when Andy Sajor, of Plattsburgh, N.Y., offered to let me hitch a ride over an icy Lake Champlain. The 13th largest lake in the country, Champlain sits between upstate New York and Vermont and has emerged as one of the best ice sailing venues in the U.S.

We meet at Chazy Landing on the New York side of Lake Champlain, 12 miles from the Canadian border. It’s bright and windy. The ice stretches for miles, dotted by camps of shanties set up by ice fisherman. I’m bundled up in four layers of winter clothing. Sajor hands me a crash helmet and ski goggles.

“I noticed on our way up here that there was a new plate [of ice] that formed last night,” he tells me. “It’s gonna be gorgeous if we don’t get any snow on it and it stays cold like this.”

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