This winter, when you’re cozied up to the wood stove, know that there is a group of hardy souls out at Squibnocket screaming around the pond at speeds that would get you pulled over on 495.

Iceboating has been around for years on the Vineyard, but in the ’70s, Charlie Blair of Edgartown and Scott McDowell of Chilmark got serious about it and started racing DN boats, one of the oldest and most popular classes of iceboat. Over the years, racing has taken them to competitions as far away as Siberia. Scott contends, however, that his favorite place to iceboat is still here on the Island with his friends and fellow iceboaters in the Squibnocket Ice Rocket Association.

So how do you get in on the action?

If you can sail, you can iceboat. McDowell goes one step further: “All you have to do is be able to drive down to the pond,” he contends.

Let’s start with the fundamentals. As on “soft water” boats (iceboaters refer to their craft as “hard water” boats), there’s a sail controlled by a length of rope called a sheet. The big difference between a sailboat and the average iceboat is that the iceboat has steel runners attached to crossbars that stabilize the boat (rather than a centerboard or keel). In addition, the iceboat is steered by a steel runner at the bow versus a rudder at the stern. As you lie on your back in the cockpit of an iceboat, the tiller is in front of you – and in some cases you use foot pedals to steer the boat. Foot pedals are convenient because they free up a hand for waving or, depending upon your level of proficiency, hanging on for dear life. While the boats normally travel twenty to fifty miles per hour, on a brisk day you can be pushing seventy before you know it.

However, not all boats are steered by a bow runner. The classic stern steerers are steered, as the name implies, by a tiller at the back of the boat. One such stern steerer is Wiz, owned by Phil Spalding of West Tisbury. Hugh Taylor of Aquinnah, who sails Wiz with Phil, believes that the boat was built around 1880 and could very well be the oldest iceboat in use in America. But Wiz is distinguished in other ways: it’s about twenty-eight feet long, gaff rigged with a single headsail and a topsail. “When it’s under sail it looks like something out of Pirates of the Caribbean,” says Taylor.

If there’s ice out at Squibnocket, chances are you’ll find Scott and Charlie and a group of regulars flying around the pond. Not only that, Scott usually has an extra iceboat there just for newcomers. Dress warm, strap on a helmet, and hang on tight – it’s not as hard as you might think. Getting into the prestigious Squibnocket Ice Rocket Association, however, is a little more complicated. As McDowell explains: “For that you have to buy a T-Shirt.”