This winter, the Chesapeake Bay experienced a rare environmental phenomenon. A weakened polar vortex sent a surge of Arctic air southward, locking the region in ice for a week. While most watermen were stuck at the docks for a time, unable to work, a small group of sailors seized the moment—racing across the frozen bay at thrilling speeds. Among them was Michael Keene, an Eastern Shore native who took to the ice in a way few Chesapeake boaters have ever experienced: ice boating.
Ice boats were brought to Chesapeake, specifically Talbot County, during the record-cold winter of 1977-’78, for the DN Ice Boating World Championship. The championship, originally set to take place on the Great Lakes where the majority of ice boating takes place, was moved to the Miles River on the Chesapeake, when a heavy snowfall blanketed the iced-over creeks and rivers of the Great Lakes and north.
Why the Miles, of all places? Larry Klein, the man tasked with finding a new location for the races, was close friends with Dianna Mautz, a St. Michaels resident. When Klein inquired about the ice conditions on the Chesapeake, Mautz measured the ice thickness on the river and gave the green light to host the races in St. Michaels, Maryland.
Sailors from the Midwest, Northeast, Canada, Poland, West Germany, and the Netherlands, flocked to the frozen Chesapeake. With the influx of competitors, a few locals—Dianna and her husband John Mautz, log canoe skipper Jimmy Wilson, and Vance Strausburg—quickly assembled boats to join the races. Though no locals took home the trophy, the excitement of ice boating took hold. When the championship ended, the excitement of ice boating lingered.
The last time the Chesapeake experienced ice thick enough for ice boating was 2018. Whenever the region gets a prolonged period of low temperatures and conditions that are conducive to freezing, Keene and the members of the Chesapeake ice boating community are ready. “The boat’s basically been ready since the last time we sailed it,” he says.
The late Dianna Mautz’s ice boat stays ready for the right conditions. Photo courtesy of Michael Keene.
While Keene doesn’t own his own boat, he is the caretaker of the late Dianna Mautz’s boat. “[The vessel is] in great condition,” Keene says. He keeps the boat ready to launch at the first opportunity. “Every few years we get a period of time that allows for them to be used, I don’t want to spend that precious time trying to fix the boat, I want to use it.”
And use it, he does. Over the seven days that his creek was iced over, he says he went out every day for at least 5-6 hours each day. “The conditions are so rare that you have to take advantage of them. For just a few days the Bay turns into a whole new world”. On one of the days, Keene had a midday commitment, so to get his time in, he went out before sunrise.
But inevitably, the ice boating window ends. A warmer spell broke the freeze in late January, and the ice cover began to decrease around the Bay. “My heart sort of sank on the day I went down to the ice and it was all gone,” Keene says.
But we're due for another cold blast next week, so he might have another shot.
Only once since we arrived in 1985 has the ice out in front of our beach been thick enough to hold up people, let along ice boats. No ice boat in my shed.
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