Ice yachting on the Hudson off Athens, N.Y. Credit Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times

MORE than 100 years ago, people regularly congregated at the Hudson River for winter entertainment and recreation. It was not uncommon to see thousands of people gather on the frozen river for carnivals of music, dancing, food, skating and, most thrilling, ice yacht races.

The enthusiasm for the sport a century ago is not surprising, given that the boats could reach speeds well above that of the trains running along the river.

The sepia-toned era of winter sports on the Hudson is largely dead, not because of advances in home entertainment or newer extreme sports, but mainly because of a pattern of warmer winters, the river simply doesn’t freeze over as often or as deeply as it once did. The long seasons of yesteryear, with dozens of ice yachts and large crowds of onlookers, has turned into the occasional weekend outing, with a small but dedicated group of enthusiasts keeping history alive.

The last day of January marked the start of the ice sailing season on the Hudson this year, but could just as easily mark its end. There are spots elsewhere that more reliably ice over, but for New York’s longest river, where the sport earned fame, the opportunities are now fleeting. In a typical year there might be a two-week window. Last year, there was no ice sailing on the river.

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“You may get three years in a row, and then you may not be on it another five years,” said John Sperr, one of the organizers of the Hudson River Ice Yacht Club, a group of about 60 members founded in 1869 by John A. Roosevelt, Franklin’s uncle.

On this particular day, the four main elements needed for good ice sailing came together: ice (or “hard water,” at least four inches thick), consistently cold weather, not a lot of snow and, of course, wind. When these stars align and the ice boats, some of which began sailing on the Hudson in the late 1800s, reappear, it’s like a wintry Brigadoon.

“You have to have a lot of delayed gratification for this sport,” said Jack Weeks, a physician in Kingston, N.Y., as he assembled the 100-year-old, two-man Greyhound ice boat at the public boat launch in Athens, about 120 miles north of Manhattan.

A mile-or-so stretch of water beside the small town has the advantage of being cut off from the wider river by an island, creating shallow depths good for forming ice and safe ice sailing away from traffic on the main channel.

Reassembling an old boat, which can be left in storage for years, can take two or more hours. “You don’t want to rush,” Mr. Weeks said, “because once you get up and start getting fast, you don’t want to have any breakdowns. It could be harmful to your health.”

These antique vessels of timber and canvas sail cloth function similarly to their “soft water” counterparts, and there is some shared terminology, but the boats themselves look nothing alike. The hull of an ice yacht looks like a balance beam laid perpendicular onto a bench with a flag pole rising from where they meet. This wooden cross is held together by cables and turnbuckles all sitting on three machete-size skates.

During assembly and between sails, the sailors love to pore over the details of the boats’ graceful construction and how they manage difficult repairs to these 100-plus-year-old vessels. As a matter of principle, repairs are made with materials available to the original craftsmen. “Sometimes just fixing and taking care of them is as fun as anything,” Mr. Weeks said.

There are newer boats that come as well, like the DN class two-man racers that get their name from a Depression-era design contest held by The Detroit News. There’s no palpable snobbery between those keeping up vintage wood boats and those sailing fiberglass descendants. Up close though, it’s the old, handcrafted ice yachts that draw attention.

In the newer ice boats, the sailor sits toward the back and controls direction with a steering mechanism in the bow. But on the older ones, they travel head-first and steer by reaching back to a tiller in the stern, like small soft water boats. You lie down on the cockpit, a small sled of bedding, and travel only a foot and a half off the ice, at highway speeds. One onlooker described a successful ice sail as akin to “riding a motorcycle, with no brakes.”

Even when everything goes smoothly and nothing breaks, you’re exposed to temperatures that threaten frostbite.

The premier boat out that first full day of the season was the Vixen, built in 1885 with a speed-enhancing sail, called a lateen rig, that so impressed John Roosevelt he bought it on first sight.

The Vixen’s current owner (or as he puts it, “it kind of owns me”) for the past 35 years is Reid Bielenberg, a longtime restoration craftsman in the Hudson Valley. He sees a long life for his boat. “She’s 120 years old and has at least that in her,” he said.

Despite its advanced age, the Vixen is a smooth flight, especially when you quietly glide on a clean straightaway. Full speed on choppy bits, on the other hand, rattles the frame and tackle into a thrilling roller coaster clatter.

Throughout the day more boats arrived. With them were families with small children, groups of friends and solo enthusiasts. The regulars largely know each other, many being members of the dues-short ice yachting clubs of the area.

Then there were the gawkers. Local photographers shooting the boats, new enthusiasts patiently waiting for an invitation to ride and others who just happened by and stopped for a closer look. The last stream of onlookers marveled, some even tiptoeing out on the ice to ask a few questions before leaving.

At the end of a day of hard-water sailing, after the sun set and the wind died down, food arrived, beer and wine were poured and a fire stove was lighted, building a living tableau of Hudson winters past.

“As long as we have ice on the river, Mr. Bielenberg said, “we’ll be out here.”

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