Tell That to Jeff Moyle’s Racers
Throttles build pressure, like a thrilling dare creating a harmony of engines gunning toward the water. Then comes the spray – crisp and slapping behind the tracks of snowmobiles. Out on the lake you hear the scream of sleds on open water and the cheers of the crowd on land. Believe it or not your snowmobile is an amphibious vehicle as long as you can stay afloat. Popular in Wisconsin and parts of Michigan, snowmobile waterskipping (a.k.a. watercross) is an insane feat that takes serious skill. Every August, the Jeff Moyle Memorial Race takes place in Lake Linden, Michigan. That’s about eight hours north of Detroit in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, or about five hours north of Green Bay.
Snowmobile culture is no joke up here. It knows no season and never stops. A typical winter can bring 300+ inches on a good year on the Keweenaw Peninsula, but it’s never enough for true sledheads. Waterskipping is a thrilling passion for locals like Austin Serotzke, an owner of Jam Service Inc. in Lake Linden. Serotzke not only loves to promote the race, he looks forward to taking his skip across the water each year. He says his friend group helped ignite the flame for a local race by attending others in the region.
“The way the race kind of started is many years ago there was actually a watercross in Baraga,” said Serotzke. “That kind of went away for many years. Then, a group of us got started into racing again. There’s one fellow that had raced back in the day in Baraga. His kid is a good buddy of mine. They went to a watercross race and him and another one of their buddies kind of went, well, let’s build or buy a couple of sleds and get into it.”
The Race Was Born
Instead of going five to six hours south for waterskipping, the group decided to work on bringing a race to Lake Linden. The heart-stopping show takes place at the Lake Linden Village Campground, with a perfect sandy beach start for sleds. It’s all a fundraiser for the Lake Linden Fire Department. Hundreds of people flock to watch around 40 riders try their might on Torch Lake. Not to be confused with Torch Lake in the Lower Peninsula, this one’s way up north!
“So Saturday racing is your qualifying racing,” said Sorotzke. “We do oval races and depending on the class, determines how many laps you do in that. So, typically, your qualifying races, there are three people out on the water at a time. Then when we get into our finals, you actually have six people out at a time.”
Racers will navigate an oval course hitting specific checkpoints – and even jumps. They speed across water like a boat, leaving a wake glimmering in the sun. It’s a spectacle to feast your eyes on, but what happens when they sink? (Or maybe that’s the fun part.) Serotzke’s family business at Jam Service is marine needs – so they stay on standby with a barge to retrieve sleds. He says every contestant has a buoy attached so their machine can be easily located and pulled out when bad luck strikes. Once on dry land – a good mechanic can get a sled running again in five to ten minutes. The International Watercross Association also attends, and runs another vessel for recoveries. The Jeff Moyle Races are one of six events the association promotes through the year. Some would even say it’s the best.
“It’s adrenaline packed,” said Serotzke. “You’re smelling the smells of burnt race fuel, which is a completely different smell than your typical fuel. We’re running, a lot of these sleds, like the one that I race, I mean, we’re running really high fuel. Like, you go to a fuel pump, the highest you can get is 91, 93 octane. We’re running 116. I race a Ski-Doo. It is pretty heavily modified. That one we’re up in the neighborhood of like 180-190 horsepower. Twin pipes – so they’re loud. You hear them, they’re going on.”
If you’re looking to try it next year – Serotzke says it’s worth entering even if you’re just starting to skip.
“Riding across the lake it kind of takes your mind off everything, you know, from your day-to-day life, and you’re focusing on one thing, and it’s an absolute blast because you’re riding something on the water that shouldn’t be out on the water, right? So you got that thrill of yeah, you can get the sled back, dry it out, but you don’t want to be in that position.”
Results of 2025
Pro Open: Dayton Moyle
Semi Pro Open: Tim Corrigan
Sport Open: Nick Hagemann
Pro Stock: David Fischer
Semi Pro Stock: Tyler Baird
Pro Lemans: Dayton Moyle
Semi Pro Lemans: Jake Bradshaw
Full Sends Only
When the last sleds came back to land, Torch Lake shimmered with summer’s glow, waterspray and disbelief. The names on the leaderboard weren’t just racers. These contestants in the Jeff Moyle Races are families, neighbors, mechanics and die-hard sledheads who’d been working on their machines all summer long.
But, the leaderboard is just a footnote. What people remember is the spray, the roar and the crowd leaning in screaming for one more run. It’s the sound of two-strokes and laughter bouncing across Torch Lake from the campground. By Monday, the campground will be quiet again. The buoys will be pulled, the sleds drained and drying in garages. But anyone who was here will still hear it — that wild symphony of water and throttle that says summer’s alive and kicking. You can follow the races on Facebook, or stay tuned to the International Watercross Association for more details on race dates and more near you.
The Duality of a Snowmobile
It’s funny when you think about it — the same sleds skipping across Torch Lake in August will be carving through powder before long. The same engines that screamed over water will ride over snowdrifts, steam rising off hoods instead of spray. That’s the duality of a snowmobile: built for winter, but restless in summer. •
