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: