1990 Canadian Sailcraft CS34 Shoal Draft
Sail #8268

1982 Catalina 22 Fin Keel
Sail #10506

1994 MUMM 36 ACE
Sail # 29206

Sunday, November 27, 2016

C22 Shrink Wrap

Been busy and it has been cold.

On the weekend it was sunny and warm (high 7 degrees C) with not much wind.

Got the frame up on Saturday, and the shrink wrap on with the help of dockmate Scott.

However, the Shrinkwrap gun was in use on Razorbill, so I used it on Sunday to complete it.

Laying the shrinkwrap on

Starboard folded under strings

Starboard shrunk

Port framework
Port folded under strings

Port shrunk

This shows; the framing well using the mast as a ridge pole

Stern wrapped

Stern shrunk

Little Still Time is ready to hibernate.

Saturday, November 5, 2016

CS34 Cover

It was sunny and warm (over 12 degrees C).

Rita and I we determined to get the cover on big Still Time.

While I was getting the frame together Rita was emptying the boat.  This year we are removing all the cushions and storing them in the basement at home.

Loaded up BOTH the truck and car with cushions
Laying out and assembling the frame is a two person job.  The canvas cover zippers into three pieces to make it manageable.

Fitting cover on stern
You can see the bimini frame below the boat


Starboard side

Stern

View from the clubhouse
Second boat in
Very easy boat access for the winter.

Motor and water system winterized.

Topped up the batteries with distilled water, and charged them up.

Big Still Time is ready for a sleep.



Friday, November 4, 2016

WYC Swan Haulout

The work crews were busy taking out the remaining docks in the basin for the winter.

I asked them to also take the sailing school's Swan paddle boat out to save us from using the mast crane later.


...and a YouTube video of the lift:

https://youtu.be/k4w_2_w2tho



Monday, October 31, 2016

Cleaning Bottoms

Got down to the club to a beautiful sunny afternoon about 10 degrees C, and got the Still Time's bottoms power washed.



The 22 is listing to port on the cradle and will have to be leveled.  I leveled the cradle before I left for BC, but all the cradles in the row of boats had been shifted about 6ft to the east and not leveled..

Also, the port scupper is plugged.

Would have liked to power wash the bottoms shortly after haulout, but could not get there.  The dried bottom scum is harder to get off when it has dried (haulout was over a week ago).  As a result you end up power washing some of your VC-17 bottom paint off.

The Sikaflex 15LM keel joint dressing is starting to come off after 4 seasons, so will have to be re-done in the spring.

http://svstilltime.blogspot.ca/2012/05/c22-launch-eve.html

Not bad!


Next steps on the 22:




  • empty the sails and cushions
  • take outboard home
  • level the boat
  • unplug scupper
  • build frame and shrink wrap

The CS34 is looking fine:



Next steps on the 34

  • winterize motor
  • winterize water system
  • remove bimini frame
  • remove dodger
  • put up winter frame and cover
  • remove cushions for the winter


ACE come out on Friday.

Saturday, October 29, 2016

ACE De-Masting

We had not been able to sail the deep draft boats since the end of Sept, as the water levels have dropped by as much as 3ft from the spring.

The three deep draft boats ACE (7.2ft), Razorbill (7.5ft), and Grafitti (9ft) are being hauled out next Friday, so we had to get them from their slips on the end of dock 6 to the mast crane.

Razorbill and ACE
There was a strong south wind overnight, that had been pushing water into the harbour resulting in the water level coming up a foot.

Three of us managed to get ACE over to the mast crane taking about 20 minutes at full throttle to plough through the silt.  We did hit a couple of hard clay spots, but just drove around them.



Razorbill drafts another 4" and was turned around the other way, and we could not move her.

We got dockmaster Tony with the club work boat to hook on the bow:


With the 50HP motor, we we able to turn Razorbill around and tow her to the mast crane.

Peter and Leigh on Razorbill
Here is a YouTube video of the process:

https://youtu.be/RzXMHUMfWes

We spent the rest of the afternoon taking the sails off, and removing all the running rigging.

We had Mike, Michael, Jenny, Peter, Mark, and Me, so we spent some time taking EVERYTHING out of the boat and giving her a thorough cleaning on the inside.  We got the head pumped out and winterized.    We loaded up two pickup trucks with sails, cushions, and lines, and took them to my place for winter storage.

We got the mast down on all three boats!




...and the two photos stitched together:




Friday, October 28, 2016

WYC Race Marks

One of my last duties as WYC Fleet Captain is to get the race marks in for the winter.

There are 9 marks approximately a mile and a half offshore:



Three of use went out on the race committee boat Tanker Jones.
There was about 10 knots of wind from the north, but it was very cold around 4 degree C.
Dressed up with plenty of layers of clothes, foul weather gear, and a touque.

Flat water with the north wind

Race Officer Paul piloting Tanker Jones

Marks in the cockpit
The marks are in anywhere from 50ft of water (north mark) to 100ft of water (south mark).  It was hard work pulling up over 100ft of chain with a 25lb concrete anchor block.  Basically we had Ken and I pulling the marks with Paul putting the chain in a 5 gallon pail.

Took us a couple of hours.

We could not find mark 5.  In the past couple of weeks, we have had MAJOR storms with strong winds from the SE.  We will have to make up a new barrel, chain, and anchor for next season.

Tanker Jones comes out next Friday, so remaining tasks

  • replace some chain buckets
  • put marks on land
  • remove the canvas
  • remove the flag halyards and mast
  • pump out and winterize the head
  • position the cradle


Saturday, October 22, 2016

CS34 Haulout

I am on vacation in Victoria BC, I will miss haulout.

Can't say that I MISSED it!

Dave Sandford looked after Still Time for me.

She was the 3rd boat lifted out in 30 knots winds!



THANKS DAVE

...and the video from Michael Cullen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Os0Gm4cAqrA


CRAZY winds, surprised they are doing the haulout!

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

WYC Frostbite Series Race 5

NOT

Final race of the season, and the deep draft boats ACE and Razorbill cannot get out to the lake.

We had planned to race on Mike's Impromptu (Erikson 35) against Peter's Sumac (Viking 33).
Mike was delivering Impromptu leaving National at noon.

Ahh, but winds were light, then on the nose, and he ran out of fuel, and wouldn't get the to club until after the race started.

I was going to take little Still Time out, but decided I best be getting the mast down on the 34.

Rita and I leave for Victoria on Saturday for some visits with family, and some sailing.
We will be away for haulout, so both boats need to be ready to go.

Got the sails, boom, and rigging backed off in the afternoon, and took the mast down around 5pm.


Mike came in on Impromptu (sans motor) sailing into the basin.  We had to catch him, and find some gas to get him going.  Still Time and Impromptu are now back at dock 8.



Today I cleanup the lines on the boat, and put the mast away.

Perhaps take the mast down on the 22.

Looking at the results, ACE got a 3rd place flag for the Frostbite series!


Monday, October 10, 2016

Albin 43 Trawler Delivery

Chris Mace from the club recently sold his Bayfield 36 and bought an Albin 43 trawler, and was looking for help delivering her from Port Colbourne through the Welland Canal.   I had never goine through the canal, and jumped at the opportunity.

We met at the club at 6am on the holiday Monday.
  • Chris
  • John
  • Frank
  • Jim 
  • Me

We loaded the truck up with the jack stands and canvas, and Jim drove the truck back to Whitby.

We thought that Chris should name the boat "Parallel Dementia"

We loaded the boat with our gear and got familiar with her:

At the dock at Sugarbush Marina

View from Ssalon
The boat is in really good shape.  Dual 240hp turbocharged Perkins diesel engines, generator, and bow thruster.  Her brightwork needs some work, but in great shape.

We left the dock and headed into Lake Erie:

John and Chris on the bridge
We arrived at the first lock a little before 10am.  Calling "Welland Seaway" on channel 14, they had a backup downstream of lakers coming up to Lake Erie.  Commercial traffic gets priority, so we parked at the town docks to wait it out.



John and some random guy fishing
We had to hang around until after 3pm for all the upbound traffic to go by


Shortly after this ship went by, we cast off @3:42pm (almost 5 hours!).  In our haste, we left Frank at the dock and had to go back and get him:

Come back!
They left the bridge up from the Polsteam ship and we proceeded down the canal


The first lock was about a mile past the lift bridge. 

Frank on the bow
This lock is a shallow (drops about 5ft) control lock that keeps waves/storm surges out of the canal.

We then proceeded to mile 12 (first lock is at mile 20) downstream.


We cruised along at the speed limit 8 knots at 1,100 RPM.

We passed the "St Marys Cement II" which was heavily loaded with cement from Bowmanville:


We waited around from another couple of hours and the wall while several upbound boats came through the lock.  We also had to wait from the downbound red boat that passed us in the early afternoon.  You cannot go into the locks with these ships, and just had to wait it out.

We waited until for "CSL Niagara" to pass us:

Canada Steamship Lines Niagara
These ships are huge, most were empty coming back to Lake Erie to get grain and salt.

Chris on his phone waiting it out

We had to wait for another upbound ship and were in the lock at little after 9pm

You would wait for the light go to from red to green and proceed into the lock.

Canal staff would pass bow and stern lines to us, and they would let the water out of the lock.

Frank/John were on the bow, while I was on the stern.


As the boat lowered, we would use boat hooks to keep the boat off the wall, and the lines to keep the boat from drifting too far off the wall.

Each lock would drop about 50 ft into about 5 minutes.  AMAZING

Leaving the first lock

A couple miles later, we came to a series of step locks, each dropping about 50ft.  These double locks separate up/down bound traffic.  On the last step lock, we had to wait for a train to pass over a lift bridge on the other side of the lock   We had to wait almost an hour!

Waiting for Train to pass
Here is a YouTube video of the train passing:

https://youtu.be/dMx7LhuKZCk

The 2nd last lock was the slowest and took over 30 minutes to drain.


Alas we were through the last lock, and out into Lake Ontario.  The half moon that we saw earlier was gone and it was VERY dark.

Here is our GPS track to Port Weller Marina:


It was dark.
It was cold.
Everyone was tired and punchy.
We ran aground.
We took a slip on the end of a dock stuck in the mud.
Hooked up to shore power for some heat, and went to sleep at 3am.

What have a learned from my Welland Canal experience?
PATIENCE

Thanks for the experience Chris!

Trip Odomter: 26.17 miles
Avg Speed: 6.6 knots
Moving Time: 04:05:00
Stopped Time: 16:50:00  (!!!!!!)

Google Earth Track

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Thursday, October 6, 2016

CS34 Impromptu October Sail

Got down the club and it was sunny and warm.  I hoisted the two wet spinnakers to dry them out:


Also hooked up the de-humidifier.

Rita has been sick for the past couple of days, so I called her and we decided to go out for a sail on big Still Time.

Winds were 4-6 knots from the SE, and we sailed towards Ajax on a beam reach at between 2 and 3 knots of boat speed with the autopilot on.

Notice the colour of the trees on the shoreline



Much better than staying home when you are sick.

We BBQed some sausages we had in the fridge and cooked up the old standby KD (Kraft Dinner).

Close reach @4 knots
The winds started picking up, and we tacked around and were able to do between 4 and 5 knots on the way back.  There was 8 knots of breeze when we took the sails down.


Hello Mark 2

ACE and Razorbill "on the hard"



What a great sail!

Had to be back for a club board meeting.

Trip Odometer: 7.52 miles
Avg Speed: 3.6 knots
Moving Time: 02:05:16

Google Earth Track

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Wednesday, October 5, 2016

ACE WYC Frostbite Race 4

On my way to the club in the afternoon, I picked up some batten material from Port Whitby Marine Supplies.

Got the dacron delivery main attached at the tack and clew and fitted/cut the battens to it.

Tonight we had

  • Mike (driver)
  • Micheal (pit)
  • Me (bow/jib)
  • Ashley (bow)
  • Walter (jib)
  • Dave (main)
  • Christine (runners)

We untied the lines at 5:20pm, but were stuck on the bottom, and could not back up.
We tried weight to starboard.
We tried weight to port.
We tried weight on the bow.
We hoisted the mainsail to heel us over.
We tied hoisting lines to fingers.
We had Nirvana tow our stern.
We had Nirvana tow our bow.




Finally, we got the boat back far enough that we could swing the bow around and we able to get out. The bulb keel on ACE is tapered back and makes backing up difficult:


Razorbill is a little more rounded at the back, but 4" deeper;



We got out of the channel at 17:53 (over half a hour!) and the race was already starting.

In our panic to get out, we had not even got a headsail on deck, or run sheets.  We brought the heavy #1 on deck, and found there was too much wind for it, so we swapped it out for the #2.

We sailed as fast as we could to the start, and followed the pack to windward mark 6 with winds 11-15 from the east.

First spin hoist was a little late because we were still rigging the spinnaker lines after the rounding. Once we got it up, we were flying toward the leeward mark, leaving the headsail up because we didn't need to gybe to the mark.

On the next upwind leg, we just brought another chute up on deck instead of packing the other one.  Ashley was on the port deck hooking up the spin lines, and I was on starboard deck rigging the pole, when a puff over powered us and the spinnaker came out of the bag half into the water with the sheets and guys attached.  Luckily we didn't have the halyard attached the head, or we would have had a boat stopping/spinnaker ripping shrimping situation.  It took Ashley, Walter, and I all our strength to get the sail back on the boat.  Surprisingly, the chute went up no problem!  All three of us were soaked!

On the upwind legs, we experimented with sail trim.  With the #2 sheeting in hard, we could do 6.8 knots into the waves.  We let the #2 sheet out about 2 ft, and sheeted in the main, and were able to do 7.5 knots upwind.

Only the Evelyn 32 saves us from scoring a DFL, but after handicap we DEFINATELY DFL!

I guess it could have been worst, we could have broken something, or hoisted the spinnaker upsidedown like Winston Churchill did:




Good thing they didn't have to gybe!

Coming in the channel, we left the main up to heel us over, as we saw Razorbill was grounded about 40ft from the end of dock 6.


We took their stern with speed and promptly grounded 25ft from the dock.  It took us about 20 minutes to get her to the dock.  Razorbill took another half an hour!




Needless to say, we beat Razorbill to the dock! LOL
The sailing season for us deep draft boats is done.
If the water drops further, we may have difficulty getting the boats to the mast/haulout crane.

Trip Odometer: 6.63 miles
Avg Speed: 6.6 knots!
Max Speed: 14.1 knots!
Moving Time: 01:18:49

Google Earth Track

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