- [Ward] On this edition of "Great Lakes Now."

Sailing on ice.

That was the most fun thing I've ever done.

I don't know why anyone sails in normal water.

This is the most fun sailing on earth.

Winter surfing on Lake Ontario.

- Conditions were really fun.

It's a perfect winter session and it's really enchanting.

- [Ward] And news from around the lakes.

- Lake trout has been on life support in Lake Michigan for many years.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] This program is brought to you by: the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation.

The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.

The Consumers Energy Foundation is committed to serving Michigan, from preserving our state's natural resources and sustaining our future to continuing business growth, academic achievement and community involvement.

Learn more at consumersenergy.com/foundation.

The Richard C. Devereaux Foundation for energy and environmental programs at DPTV.

The Polk Family Fund.

Eve and Jerry Jung.

The Americana Foundation.

The Brookby Foundation.

Founders Brewing Company.

And viewers like you.

Thank you.

- Hi, I'm Ward Detwiler.

Welcome back to "Great Lakes Now."

You've seen people sailing on the lakes in the summertime, but have you ever seen anyone ice boating in the winter?

The sport has deep roots in the Great Lakes region and not long ago, I got a chance to try it.

I've been sailing on the Great Lakes my whole life, but there's one kind of sailing I've never done.

It's called ice boating.

And instead of sailing through the water, you race across the ice on blades.

The mechanics are basically the same, but it looks fast and fun.

Ron Sherry is the most accomplished ice boat racer in the world and he calls the Great Lakes home.

He's won every title and earned every accolade.

At last count, he was the five time world champion in his class, 14 time North American champion, and eight time Ice Boat World Champion title holder.

Oh, and he's also an award-winning summer sailor.

Ron promised to get me out on the ice, but first I wanted to visit his workshop to learn more about the sport and the ice boats, because Ron doesn't just race them, he builds them.

Hey, Ron.

- How are you, Ward?

- Good to see you.

- Good to see you.

- So I'm so excited to be here.

I've been wanting to check this out forever and check out the sport forever.

Tell us where we and what you do here.

- Well we're in the composite concept shop and this is where all the magic happens.

I build the best, most fun toys in the world, which you're gonna get to see today.

It's gonna be great to see the grin on your face, when we come off the ice.

Build the fuselages here, that's the hull, it's what you actually sit in.

We make them out of Sitka spruce with okoume mahogany decks, all minimum thickness, so they're as light as possible.

There's minimum weights on all the components, the mass, the plank, and the hull.

So we try to get 'em as close to minimum weight as possible.

And that's how we do it here.

- I noticed rather than calling it a hull, you call it a fuselage.

Is using the airplane terminology, an indication of how fast these things can go?

- Yeah, I mean in Finland one year, I got clocked at 143 kilometers an hour, which is 94 miles an hour.

There was five kilometers between the marks when we raced and it was '98 and I won my first world championships there.

And they had a gun out there, a speed gun, and crazy breakneck speed.

But don't worry, you don't have to go that fast unless you want to.

- But you can.

(Ron laughs) - [Ward] Ron races, a class of boats called the D-N class.

D-N stands for "Detroit News," the legendary newspaper for the city of Detroit.

In 1936, the paper held a contest to come up with a design for an affordable, easy to build iceboat.

- [Ron] Over the years they came up with specifications.

We're still using basically the same rules with some small modifications, and it's still using a lot of the basic rules it all started out with.

And it's the biggest class in the world.

I mean, there's a lot of great ice boats, but D-N class has the most participation.

It's huge in Europe.

- [Ward] How many boats do you make in a year?

- [Ron] About six to 10, depending on the year, fuselages.

- [Ward] Yeah.

- [Ron] I built over a thousand, probably 1,100 masts now for the boats.

- [Ward] Wow.

- I've built around 250, 300 hulls.

I don't know how many planks.

And I build about 150 runners a year.

(bright music) (wind blowing) - [Ward] A passion for ice boating runs in the family.

Ron's dad was a three time world champion in a class of boats called Renegades.

Ron won his first ice boat race when he was nine.

So Ron got all three of his kids racing when they were very young.

His son, Griffin has ranked as high as fifth in the world, and the sport has taken Ron to beautiful, frozen locations all over the world.

- We went out and raced in Montana two years ago for the North American championships and that was so much fun.

Oh my gosh.

And I've been to Siberia and raced on Lake Baikal.

Lake Baikal is a 5,600 foot deep, fresh water lake.

(people cheering) - [Ward] D-N ice boats have to meet certain standards in size and weight.

- These boats are minimum length because of trying to make the boat as light as possible.

It actually has a crown in the bottom of it.

It goes up three quarters of an inch under the mast step, where the mast goes on top of the hull.

So if you actually look down the table, you can see that.

So this boat has a very long cockpit, which is really good for a guy like you.

- So I decided to test it out.

Oh, this is a tight fit in here.

I'm actually surprised I can lay down on this thing.

- Yep.

And you'll have a helmet on, and there's a piece of foam behind the seat back, and you're able to put your helmet right on the seat back.

- So when you're sailing, you're just laying in this little box?

- Yeah, it's a little bit like a luge.

And then when you really get going, see you'll steer with your knees.

There'll be a tiller that you'll be able to steer with your knees.

And then you'll sheet with both hands.

- [Ward] And yank as hard as I can?

- And you're gonna pull the sheet and use the sheet to hold the tiller between your knees, so it doesn't pop out.

- I'm just imagining myself right now.

Just going 60 miles an hour, just right on the ice.

- Yeah, with ice right here.

- [Ward] Yeah.

- The good news is, like I said, the boats only weigh 46 pounds.

So there's not a lot of inertia.

If you hit something, it just crumbles and you go sliding across the ice.

You gotta helmet on and a race suit.

- Is that supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing?

- Yeah.

- It doesn't sound like it's a good thing.

- [Ron] You're gonna be safe.

You're gonna be safe.

- I'm feeling excited and I wanna go out on the lake.

This is awesome.

- Well, let's go.

- Let's go.

Let's go sailing.

Finding the best ice for racing is always a challenge.

The surface needs to be relatively smooth, and without a lot of snow.

On this day, the best conditions were on Walled Lake in suburban Detroit, where a group of racers have been coming to practice for US nationals.

- Last weekend, we had people from Boston, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Traverse City down in Indiana, Ohio.

I mean, everybody came to Walled Lake, cause it was great conditions.

We had the 30 boats out on Friday and 50 boats out on Saturday.

And it was a lot of the very best of the best of the US were out there.

It was fantastic.

- [Ward] It's going, we're almost there.

- We're gonna get him going here quick.

- We're almost there.

Unloading the gear and putting the boat together is tough with frozen fingers.

Once it was all together, Ron had some last minute instructions.

- So when you go to start, you see you pull the tiller back and when you twist it, it stays, okay?

If you leave it straight forward, now when you run off, it's gonna go like that.

- Put a little torque on it?

- A little twist, right?

Trim the sheet into where you want it.

I put the tiller like this.

I put the sheet over the tiller.

That way if the wind shifts you get a big lift, and if it starts to try to hike, you can just lift up your thumb.

- [Ward] Okay.

- And the sail goes out, okay?

Then you hold it like this, push off.

(Ron yells) Outside foot on, slide in with the inside foot.

And the sheet on.

- [Ward] Cool.

- And then when you get going, you just move this tiller to where you can easily turn with your knees, remember?

- [Ward] Yep.

- And you hold the main sheet over top of it.

- If the boat does anything like this, you've got the tiller between your knees, it's gonna keep the boat going basically straight.

So if you can't steer, more sheet, if the back end's breaking loose, ease.

- Do you get forward a little bit?

- A little bit.

You can bend your knees, yep.

And that's all of it.

That's a lot to remember in a short period of time.

But I think you'll have it.

- So it seems Ron thought I was ready, but there's only one way to find out.

(tense music) After some practice, I started to get the hang of it.

Oh, every part of my body feels so weird right now.

That was the most fun thing I've ever done.

I've been sailing my whole life literally since I was born.

I don't know why anyone sails in normal water.

This is the most fun sailing on earth.

It is so amazing.

You're going so fast.

The sound, it's odd, cause it's really loud, but it's almost dead quiet at the same time.

It's really cool.

Yeah, I think I won by a little bit.

Yeah, I realized that mid way through.

We're ripping.

That was so awesome.

Oh man, I'm gonna buy one of these.

These are awesome, legitimately.

Once I got started, I was blown away with how quickly the boat took off and surprised with how much it was like the sailing I had grown up doing, and actually maybe even a little better.

I got going so fast, at one point I freaked out.

I was like, "Oh my God," and let go of everything.

That was awesome, man.

Thank you so much.

This is just amazing.

So cool.

(bright music) - You have to understand that ice boating is inherently dangerous.

You're going out on a frozen lake.

There can be flaws in the ice.

There can be ice fishing holes.

So there's a certain amount of adrenaline just getting out there.

You're down right next to the ice.

You're going a million miles an hour and it feels faster than it actually is, just because of how close you are to the ice.

- [Ward] So it was one more race.

This time it was just me and the master.

- [Man] On your mark, get set, go!

- The most important thing about ice boat is the camaraderie, is of friendships, the people you meet.

And the people that are involved in the sailing have been involved with the sailing are a very unique group of individuals who are out battling mother nature, battling ice, snow, wind, cold, the whole thing and trying to get prepared as they can to go out and do it.

- Think surfing, and you probably picture Hawaii or the California coast.

You can surf the Great Lakes too.

Today, we bring you the story of the Lake Surfistas.

- [Narrator] Oshawa, Ontario native Robin Pacquing, learned to surf while on vacation in Hawaii.

It wasn't until she returned home that she discovered she could surf right outside her door on the waters of Lake Ontario.

As she tried out various Great Lakes shorelines, Pacquing started making friends among the women she met, many of whom were just as taken with the sport as she was.

In 2014, she helped found Lake Surfistas.

The Lake Surfistas is a group of women who surf and stand up paddle board the Great Lakes.

It has just over a thousand members, largely Canadians, but also with a handful in the US.

Most of their surfing happens in the fall and winter, when winds create the best conditions.

- My first surf of the new year, conditions were really fun.

It was some clean rides, some good drops, had a really long couple of waves that just took me from way out outside, all the way in.

It's cold out, but it's not super, super cold.

It's a perfect winter session.

And with this light snow it's really enchanting.

- [Narrator] On this January day, Robin and the Surfistas are riding Lake Ontario on a beach east of Toronto where waves can get as high as eight feet.

The Great Lakes can present challenges that nobody on the North Shore of Oahu has to contend with.

- One of the things that we pay attention to, especially in the winter, is ice cover.

So if there's a lot of ice chunks or the shoreline is super iced that's when it could get a little bit dicey, cause the icy conditions are very dynamic and it could be quite dangerous.

- [Narrator] Today, the water is around 39 degrees Fahrenheit, although here in Canada, that's about four degrees celsius.

However you say it, it's cold.

- So you definitely need a winter wetsuit.

Right now I'm wearing a four and a half millimeter wetsuit, five millimeter gloves and seven millimeter boots.

So typical stuff for winter.

You can go a little bit warmer than this.

- [Narrator] Robin likes to bring a buddy in case she gets into trouble.

Today, there is a small group of surfers keeping an eye on each other.

Jordan-na Belle-Isle is one of them.

She's a Toronto surfing instructor.

- Out on the water we have Robin, who's one of the original Great Lakes surfers.

She's the reason why so many women are out there surfing, cause she's been doing it for, I don't know, maybe 10 years, maybe more.

Maddie LeBlanc is also out with us today.

She is one of the best SUP racers in Canada and she's an awesome surfer, so it's great to have her out too.

And we've got a couple of surfers from Surf the Greats.

It's a local surf shop here in Toronto.

Just a lot of cool people out.

It's just about community.

It's about stoke.

Like you said, not a lot of people do the sport or get out there.

So the few people that get out there, we know each other and you just become a community.

You become family out in the water.

- [Narrator] That sense of family extends to the summer months when the surfing is less predictable.

Once the warm weather comes, the winds die down and the waves are generally not as big.

Jen Zuccato joined the Lake Surfistas a couple years ago after learning how to surf in the Dominican Republic.

Making the switch to lake surfing required some adaptations.

- It can be very interesting.

Its definitely different than ocean surf.

So with the ocean, the water is a lot more buoyant and a lot more powerful sometimes.

The Lakes is hit and miss.

You have to look at the weather and the forecasting days ahead.

And then sometimes the weather doesn't even work out and there are no waves even when you think there will be.

So it can be frustrating, but then when the weather does work out and there are waves, its extremely magical and just a really great experience.

Everybody here is a lot of fun in the water.

I find the culture is really awesome.

Ocean surfing is a little bit of a different culture.

Here everybody's just having so much fun and so friendly in the water because we just take whatever waves we can get and have the best time with what we have.

- [Narrator] Friendliness is what the Lake Surfistas are all about, because other groups can be less welcoming to new surfers, especially if they're women.

- It's important that groups like Lake Surfistas exist because women really need a good entry point into surfing.

I find that often the surf scene isn't that friendly sometimes.

For example, on Facebook, there's a lot of open surfing groups.

So if you're a new person and you ask a question on one of these open groups, sometimes there's trolling.

Sometimes there's a lot of ego.

It's not always friendly.

So Lake Surfistas was born out of the necessity to welcome women who want to surf into this community in a safer way.

So we actually have a Facebook group where it's only open to women and we find that women in general tend to be a little bit more supportive of each other, a little bit more championing, encouraging, and "You can do this."

- [Narrator] Many members feel strongly about the environment, so Lake Surfistas hosts paddle board cleanups of local rivers leading into the Great Lakes.

Last summer as COVID-19 numbers dropped, they were able to hold a small cleanup in Toronto's Humber River, where it flows into Lake Ontario.

Fishing for trash from their paddle boards, they pulled out from the water everything from tin cans to tires.

But when it comes to surfing the Great Lakes, it's all about those cold weather months.

- I'm out here surfing because this is the time that we get to surf.

Great Lakes surf season is in the winter, cause we depend on the storms and the winds and stuff.

So we're out when we can be out.

I would safely say, this is a hardcore thing to do.

Surfing in January is not for everybody.

You do get cold.

You can probably see I'm shaking a little bit, but when you love something and it's just so much fun and it really gets you through the winter, it's worth it.

- For more on winter recreation, go to greatlakesnow.org.

Now I want to introduce a new series in the show.

Each month we'll take you around the lakes to hear from reporters about stories and issues they're covering, bite-sized news briefs about the lakes you love.

We're calling it The Catch and in this installment, we'll get updates on stories tied to Lake Michigan.

- [Narrator] Benton Harbor Michigan's water crisis has been national news for months.

Leonard Fleming of the "Detroit News," has been covering Benton Harbor's water problems for over a year.

- Benton Harbor has been experiencing high levels of lead in its drinking water system.

For three straight years, the city has had lead exceedences that have violated the lead and copper rule in the state of Michigan, as well as nationally, the federal led and copper rule.

Governor Whitmer last year pledged to raise funds to replace every single lead service line in Benton Harbor, by spring of 2023.

They have replaced upwards of about 450 pipes.

They expect there are 3,900 pipes left in the city lead service lines.

So the city and state recently hired five contractors to finish the pipe replacement.

And that's a difficult task because number one, the state has not raised all the funds needed.

They've raised about 18.5 million for a project that is expected to cost a little under or over 33 million dollars.

And the price of copper has been rising due to the pandemic.

- [Narrator] Escalating costs and the state's slow response to the crisis, have some in Benton Harbor doubting this new aggressive plan for water safety.

- I don't expect the residents anytime soon to trust the drinking water in Benton Harbor.

The numerous people I've interviewed for over a year now have continually told me that they simply have lost trust.

I think what this story illustrates for the long term is certainly the crumbling infrastructure that we see all across America, but also combining that with the environmental racism that has existed in this situation in Benton Harbor, because this is an predominantly black city that's poor, and hasn't had the financial resources to get rid of these pipes and to make the drinking water safer there.

So the funds that are coming from the federal and state governments to replace these pipes is certainly going to create a safer situation.

But some will say that it's a little too late in regards to letting the infrastructure in a city like Benton Harbor go on for so long where the drinking water became unsafe and became national news.

- [Narrator] At Indiana Dunes National Park on the south shore of Lake Michigan, Joseph S. Pete has been following the shifting sands of the dunes themselves, specifically Mount Baldy, the tallest dune in the park.

- What I've been covering is the inward migration of Mount Baldy.

It is a towering dune on the east side of the park.

It's the tallest.

It's near Michigan City.

It's about 126 feet high.

The dune has been moving inland at about five feet to 15 feet per year, to the point where it entirely consumed the access road leading out of the parking lot.

It swallowed a picnic area, a significant amount of tall oak trees that ended up creating these sinkholes.

In 2013, it was closed off to the public for several years because it swallowed a boy who was hiking up there.

The sand had gone over the top of the trees and the trees eventually disintegrated leaving behind these cavities that are now dangerous sinkholes that the National Park Service has mapped out, but you're not allowed to climb up there on your own anymore.

It has to be on a Ranger guided tour, because people can fall into the sinkholes.

- [Narrator] Officials recently announced new fees for entering the park, which could help pay to replace the facilities Mount Baldy has swallowed up.

- It's gonna raise 750,000 a year estimated, to help with park maintenance projects.

One of the things they're potentially gonna have to do is relocate the parking lot to Mount Baldy, which is also a popular beach area and potentially relocate trails and other infrastructure.

- [Narrator] In Interlochen Michigan, Interlochen Public Radio has released a special season of their "Points North" podcast called Unnatural Selection.

Dan Wanschura is IPR's program director and co-hosts "Points North."

- In this series, we look at the benefits and consequences of humans manipulating the natural world.

When you look at humans, we impact the natural world like no other species, sometimes for the betterment, sometimes for the worse.

So some of the things we talk about in Unnatural Selection, in regards to the Great Lakes, Lake Michigan in particular, have to do with removing dams on a lot of rivers.

It's been seen as a generally good thing to remove dams and restore rivers to their natural state, but we're encountering a new problem now because dams block certain invasive species from traveling up waterways.

So that's a topic.

We also deal with shoreline hardening and how the Great Lakes' shoreline are constantly eroding.

So even when we try to build things to stabilize our property, our land, it's still a losing battle.

And then the final thing that deals directly with Lake Michigan, is the idea of a Frankenfish.

Lake trout has been on life support in Lake Michigan for many years, and the population is dependent on stocking from breeding efforts.

So we look at this idea of, if we have the lake trout genome, could that somehow be used to create a heartier species in Lake Michigan with the lake trout?

Nothing is imminent with us creating this Frankenfish, but because the lake trout reference genome was cracked recently, we wanted to take it one step further.

Have that forward outlook and say, "What if we could isolate why certain lake trout species do better than others?

And could you somehow create lake trout that had a better chance of surviving in Lake Michigan?"

And it begs that question of if you have the technology, does that mean you should do it?

We cover a lot of ground in Unnatural Selection.

And I would say what I hope people get from it, take from it, is just the role that we as humans play on the natural world and the impact that we have when we make decisions regarding the management of natural resources.

- Thanks for watching.

For more on these stories and the Great Lakes in general, visit greatlakesnow.org.

When you get there, you can follow us on social media or subscribe to our newsletter to get updates about our work.

See you out on the lakes.

(bright music) - [Announcer] This program is brought to you by: The Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation.

The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.

The Consumers Energy Foundation is committed to serving Michigan, from preserving our state's natural resources and sustaining our future to continuing business growth, academic achievement and community involvement.

Learn more at consumersenergy.com/foundation.

The Richard C. Deveraux Foundation for Energy and Environmental Programs at DPTV.

The Polk Family Fund.

Eve and Jerry Jung.

The Americana Foundation.

The Brookby Foundation.

Founders Brewing Company.

And viewers like you.

Thank you.