ACE Lake Ontario 300 Preparations

After driving back from Halifax for 16 hours, we arrived in Whitby at 3am on Wednesday, Thursday was a recovery day, laundry and packing for the Lake Ontario 300 on the weekend.

Finished packing on Friday morning, loaded up the truck and headed to National to meet Michael and Kris at ACE.

I got to National at 2:30pm (traffic was terrible), and Michael and Kris had the boat over to the crane.

This is what 9,000 lbs looks like suspended 7.5 ft above the water:

Michael power washing the boat.  We also gingerly checked that the folding prop was functioning correctly.  Kris was at the stern holding a line, with me at the bow.

After powerwashing the battom on the port side, Michael went to the crane to lower it down so we could turn the boat around and lift it again to wash the starboard side.  The crane made a noise like the steel cable was slipping and the boat freefell into the water making a tsunami soaking BOTH Michael and Kris:

Two soaked guys!

The sound of the lifting strap breaking was like an explosion.  The lifting strap flew several hundred feet in the air and landed with a splash over by the power boats behind them 5 or 6 seconds later!

Luckily, ACE missed the dock, and the crane missed the rigging!
NO DAMAGE and NO ONE WAS HURT/KILLED

Many people came rushing over, including the Toronto Harbour Police.

EDIT: here is a post from a couple of years ago:

http://svstilltime.blogspot.ca/2015/05/ace-folding-prop.html

After our nerves settled down a bit, we hauled Kris up in a bosun's chair to replace the shock chord that pulls the running backstays out of the way in a tack:

We measured the forestay and found we had to shorten it by one inch.
Also check the position of the mast at the mast step.

Lost of other little things.

Packed up the boat with all the provisions from Ashley, and I headed out single handed to PCYC.

See Ya National

The autohelm steered a course to Port Credit Yacht Club.

Plane taking off from Toronto Island airport

PCYC in the distance

In the meantime, I organized stuff below, and got the waypoints into the chart plotters.

Winds were 16 knots on the nose, and I could only muster 5 knots motoring.
You cannot single handedly sail ACE.

Trip Odometer: 8.26 miles
Avg Speed: 4.9 knots
Moving Time: 01:41:00

Click for BIGGER

Got into a slip at PCYC a little before 8pm.

BBQ dinner was great, and band was awesome.
Hit the hay a little after 11pm.