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Soon the talk is brought to an abrupt halt; race time is near. They gather into one large group to discuss safety and the racing course, then draw numbers from a helmet. Next they return to their boats and move them to the starting line, where they line up next to one another pointed toward the other end of the course. They position themselves on this line based upon the numbers drawn from the helmet. Once in position, they wait for the signal to start what they came to do; race against each other, the ice, the elements and their own prior accomplishments.
It looks like an arctic version of formula one racing: The pilots all wear helmets and many of them wear sleek suits that resemble an auto racer’s coveralls. Racers steer their vessels while laying on their backs, their heads lifted straight up looking toward their feet and the front of the ice yacht. Instead of wheels, the sleek fuselage of the ice yacht has one large skate (called a runner) on both sides mounted under a plank, which resembles a short pair of wings. Mounted under the front is a third runner that is steered by the pilot to direct the ice yacht. The forward part of the craft is also where the mast is located. Toward the rear is a long handle the pilot uses to control the front runner, and lines he uses to control the sail. Like formula one cars, the vehicles are fragile and they can’t take much undue abuse. They are also fast, very fast. Like in formula one, there is an obsessive need to find ways to get more speed and maneuverability from the craft. The need for speed is not, however, purely desired for the winning of races.
 James "T" Thieler, a professional sailboat and schooner captain in his late thirties from Newport, Rhode Island, can often be found at or near the top of the list of finishers in an ice yacht race. Thieler has an extensive sailing background that includes sailboat racing, but he prefers ice yachting because it provides a dimension that other forms of sailing don’t offer. "It’s fun to go that fast…I sail boats all summer long for living, and the boats that I’m on, they’re not very challenging. They’re tour boats: sailboats that do tours around the harbor. They are big, heavy sailboats, and they go, if you’re really pushing it, around twelve miles per hour. After going that slow all summer long, it’s great to hop in an ice boat and just take off. You push off, you hop in the boat, and literally six or seven seconds later you’re doing forty or fifty miles per hour. It’s just such a cool feeling of freedom. The way you’re laying in the boat; you’re so close to the ice that if you’re doing fifty it feels like you’re doing a hundred."
The course that the ice yacht racers compete upon can be difficult to decipher for the uninitiated, partly because the way is it is navigated is dependent upon the wind and ice conditions. It is a straight course that is marked on each end by large orange pylons, called marks, that stand about four feet high and are located at least a mile apart. Up close these pylons look big, but from either end of the course they are barely discernable. The race itself must be at least two complete laps, totaling four miles, though it can be longer than this.
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