When summer comes, so does the ice.
Every June, the Martha’s Vineyard Ice Arena installs a fresh rink of ice to prepare for the year’s skating. The process starts not with water, but with paint.
“People forget that ice is clear,” said Ryan Gosson, facilities manager at the YMCA of Martha’s Vineyard. To create that perfect white ice — and more easily see the black puck — the rink must first be painted.
Viking Ice Painting was on the Vineyard Sunday to help get the job done. They began with dozens of bags of white powder, which they mixed into a tub of water. Next, using a spray boom, they walked in circles on the concrete base of the rink, misting a fine layer of white water on the surface. The water is snap frozen on the rink, which Mr. Gosson set to 14 degrees on Sunday.
Underneath the concrete, keeping it cold, is 11 miles of tubing containing water and glycol, or antifreeze. During the season the ice is kept at 19 degrees, but it depends on who’s using it, said Mr. Gosson. Figure skaters like it a bit warmer, and hockey players like it colder.
The ice painters mist four layers of white water onto the rink, creating that classic, white ice. For the next four hours, they will precisely hand-paint the blue and red lines, the face off zones, and the logos of the Martha’s Vineyard hockey rink.
Viking Ice Painting does 80 rinks a year, and works with an outside company on plans and designs, said owner Bill Becchio.
“We’re all rink rats,” he said.
Once the lines and logos are painted, it’s up to Mr. Gosson to finish the job. Over the next week and a half, he will mist a total of 125 clear layers onto the ice to get it to a thickness of 1.5 inches. He does about 20 layers a day, working early in the morning when the temperature outside is still cool. Any more layers in a day, and the compressors start struggling to keep the rink consistently cold.
In theory, Mr. Gosson could stick a fire hose onto the rink and flood it to create those 1.5 inches of ice, he said. That’s how they fill the pool back up. This spring, the YMCA drained the pool because of debris that developed from roof and deck work during construction. Over the course of a week, a single hose pumped 180,000 gallons of town water into the pool to get it back up to its normal level.
It’s a rare occurrence that the pool is drained completely, said Mr. Gosson. Usually it is automatically topped off to account for ongoing evaporation.
But the rink is drained and redone annually, and can’t be done with just a hose. Water has air in it, said Mr. Gosson. Flooding the rink with a hose would produce imperfections and cracking — a less-than-ideal environment for skaters, who require dense, smooth ice.
Since there are no skating demands in late spring and early summer, it’s the perfect time to drain and redo the ice, which becomes cloudy and skate-marked over the year. This spring, the YMCA moved its workout equipment to the bare concrete of the ice rink while they redid the facilities in the main building.
It’s not strange to use rinks in that way, Mr. Gosson said. Without the ice, the rink is just a slab of concrete. With the right flooring, it could be used as a basketball court or concert venue, like TD Garden.
This summer, there are four hockey camps taking place at the Vineyard’s arena. On average, there are 400 kids using the ice rink, said Mr. Gosson, and that’s not including recreational skating.
“For being an Island, it’s shocking how many people skate,” he said.
Every day of skating he maintains the ice with a Zamboni, which shaves away the damaged top layer of ice and dispenses hot water to resurface it with a glassy, smooth finish.
Mr. Gosson has never actually skated himself, he admitted. But he knows ice, and he knows the skaters who use it.
“It’s nice to see all the kids excited,” he said.
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