C22 Dismasting

Got down to the club at 10am to help Walter take the mast down on The Beckoning.

Walter and mutual friend Paul took off the forward/aft lowers before we headed over to the mast crane.

I went up the mast in a bosuns chair to run the lifting line.

Very easy with the mast crane.
Didn't bother with a safety line, as I was only going to the first spreader, and was hugging the mast the entire time.

Walter has never taken the mast down on this boat, and the previous owner probably didn't in a while.
The boat was put on the hard with the mast up at Wye Heritage Marina in Midland.

Took a while to get the cotter pins out of the shrouds, forestay, and backstays.
Cotter pins are a PITA, 
Two words Walter: split rings

The turnbuckles were very difficult to back off.

Mast came down without incident.

We spent the next hour tidying up the mast, wrapping the shrouds, and getting some help to get it on the mast rack.  Man it is a heavy mast!

Walter and Paul helped me get the mast down on little Still Time.

You can see the mast on the dock on the land.
Will get it cleaned up and put away another day.

Still Time is stuck in the slip as the water levels have dropped over a foot in the past couple of weeks.
The keel is hard on the bottom.
Going to need some help to get her moved for haulout.

Update, winds were blowing 15-20 knots from the SE today Thanksgiving Sunday, so there was a rise in water level in the harbour:

Could NOT move the boat with the motor.
Tried to do it without me on the boat, but the boat is STUCK.

UH OH

The Reckoning Dingy Ride

Was working on Still Time, when Walter came to the boat.

We decided to go for a dinghy ride around the Whitby Harbour.

I have dubed his dinghy "The Reckoning" as the tender for "The Beckoning".

25 hp outboard
wheel steering
hard aluminum bottom
seats
depth sounder
chart plotter

Pretty sweet!

Snap from Rob Archer:

We toured around the Yacht Club and Marina across the bay

Trip Odometer: 2.4 miles
Average Speed: 3.1 knots
Moving Time: 00:45:00

We passed ex WYC member Brian's Nonsuch 30:

He was not at the boat.

Brian has been a member of WYC for 20+ years and left the club this season to go across the bay to the marina.  Talk about a statement;  would like to know the whole story here.

The Beckoning Delivery Day 09 - NBOS

There would not be another day for this delivery story, as we pushed to get home from the Welland Canal on the Saturday night.

No Boats On Sunday!

The name of a yummy cider made in Ontario

http://www.noboatscider.com/

The Beckoning Delivery Day 08 - Lake Ontario to Whitby

We left the mouth of the Welland at Port Weller at 16:50

Winds were 10-14 knots from the east, so it looked like we would have a fast close reach sail all them way to Whitby.

We unfurled half the main and all of the jib, and were blasting along at 8.5 knots sans motor!

However, the rail was in the water washing the deck, and the dinghy and arch were racking back and forth in the waves. 

The course to Whitby was 20 degree, but we found that the boat had so much leeway from being heeled over, that we had to steer to 45 degrees to point to Whitby (instead of Toronto).

We further furled in the main, and about half of the jib to get the boat on its feet (less heel).
Had to move the jib cars forward.  Lot more comfortable with less heel, but we still had the leeway.

Thought about it later, it was the current from the Niagara River that was pushing us towards Toronto!

We did cut the corner into US waters (see above).

The crossing was uneventful, we just wanted to get home:

And into Whitby Harbour:

The harbour was dark as we navigated to the end of dock 8.

Coming into the dock, Rita and dockmates Colin/Suzzanne were our marching band greeters banging pots and pans and cheering as we arrived at the dock at 10:35

We had been teasing Walter for the last couple of days that we need to make a call to make sure the marching band was there for our arrival.

Sorry no photos.

Here is a shot of the Beckoning docked beside Still Time:

It was good to be home.

We had a drink or two before calling it a night.

Walter stayed on the boat.
Rita and I drove home to Bowmanville.
Mark drove home to Port Hope.

 615 nautical miles over 7 days.

The Beckoning was now delivered to her new home at Whitby Yacht Club.

The Beckoning Delivery Day 08 - Welland Canal

Heading east from Port Stanley will full sails up, we bumped the RPMs up to 3,000 and were moving along at 7 knots towards long point.  The winds had lightened and went further north, so all was well.

Point of sail was a close reach (60 degrees off the wind).

We past the tip of Long Point @12:56.

Walter and I came up to relieve Mike/Mark just after the turn towards Port Colborne:

We were motor sailing @6.5 knots close hauled into some chop that was fetching from Port Colborne.

The instructions from Mike were to aim the boat at the tower with two whites light dead ahead.
The thought was that that tower was Port Colborne (the start of the Welland Canal).

Mike and Mark went down to sleep, and Walter and I did as instructed.
As we got closer to shore, the waves lessened, and our speed picked up to 7 knots.
The chart plotter said we would arrive at the mouth of the Welland at 7:03.

We furled in the jib because we were too close to the wind for it to be useful.

That tower with 2 white lights was getting closer fast.
Walter took his binoculars out and noticed that that tower had a wishbone boom!
That's now a tower, that's a Nonsuch that was racing towards the Welland with us!

We altered course and passed them to port.
They had a masthead trilight AND a stern light, so that is why we mistook them for a tower.

Yet another beautiful sunrise:

Getting closer, our speed picked up to over 7 knots (less waves), and the chart plotter said we would arrive with 3 minutes to spare!

We arrive at the mouth of the Welland at 6:53am:

Walter was HAPPY

We hailed Welland control on the VHF that we were checking in.

Check in docks are on the left:

Here we are with that Nonsuch that we passed:

That Nonsuch was named Brigadoon.   The owner bought the boat in Wisconsin, picked the boat up in Chicago, and was delivering it to RCYC.   They left Windsor Yacht Club late Thu afternoon.  The difference for them was they just motored along the north shore avoiding the waves that we encountered.

Engine Hours here was 1601, so we motor sailed for 19 hours from Port Stanley
We checked the oil level and it was fine.

There was a upbound ship in lock 8 that we had to wait for.

We would be downbound short with 3 other pleasure boats

• Catalina 320 called Vineyard Girl going to Iroquois (St Lawrence River)
• Nonsuch 324 #109 called Brigadoon going to RCYC
• Big power boat called who cares going to some gas dock

We got the call on the VHF and were underway at 7:56, and entered lock 8 at 08:05:

Lock 8 is a control lock regulating the varying water depths of Lake Lake.
Only drops about 18", so we didn't even grab any lines.
We were through in 15 minutes.

The next lock is almost 14 miles away.

We motored along at 6.5 knots and arrived at 10:30, but there was an upbound ship entering lock 6/7, so we tied up and waited for 45 minutes.

Going downbound is very easy.  
When you get the green light from Welland Control, you head into the lock.
Land crew hand a bow and stern line to you.  These are used to keep the boat from wandering out into the lock and back/forth into other boats in the lock with you.

We used a boat hook to keep the boat off the walls.

The lock takes about 10-15mins to empty, dropping down 50+ feet.

Pretty mundane.
Rinse Lather Repeat!

08:05 Lock 8

11:25 Lock 7

12:20 Lock 6

12:45 Lock 5

13:48 we went under a lift bridge:

14:11 Lock 3
15:00 Lock 2

15:55 Lock 1

Going under the QEW

We were delayed in the last lock for 30 minutes because of a technical problem with the automated "hands-free" vacuum mooring system.  When pleasure crafts use the canal, these units are supposed to lock at the top.  For some reason, one didn't, so engineers had to troubleshoot it.

https://www.waterlooregionconnected.com/showthread.php?tid=749

We were now free of the locks of the Welland Canal

Map of the Welland Canal:

We passed some ships in the repair yard that had collided last week:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRvy0SR-Pr4

That won't buff out!

Notice that the ship is carrying more wind turbine blades.

We dropped Mike off at the docks at the end of the canal.
His girl Bernita would be by to pick him up.

We were out into Lake Ontario by 16:50.

UPDATE: emailed Willi from the Nonsuch Brigadoon and he sent some photos of us in the canal:

The Beckoning Delivery Day 07 - Lake Erie (Port Stanley)

We were motoring along @2,500 RPM full sails in 6-8 knots of breeze (close hauled) at 6 knots boat speed.

The Welland canal is only open for downbound traffic on Tue, Thu, Sat.
We had to be at the check in dock for 7am on Saturday, or wait until Tuesday to get through.

We had approximately 120 miles to Long Point, then another 40 miles to Port Colbourne.

That's 160 miles to cover in 32 hours.  We would have to average 5 knots to make it.

After midnight, the winds started picking up to 10-12 knots (still close hauled).
Tough to judge because our wind instrument doesn't display true wind as the boat does not have a speed paddle for the instruments to calculate it.  So the wind instrument was showing 12-14 knots of wind and we were doing 5.5-6.0 knots so were were definately seeing less than 10 knots of breeze.

There weren't any whitecaps, so that means there was less than 12 knots of breeze.

However Lake Erie is shallow (average depth is like 38ft), so the waves coming from the west were choppy/steep, yet we were in less than 10 knots of breeze.

We furled in both the main and jib.  I went on deck to move the jib cars foreward so we could sheet the jib in.  I went to sheet the jib in straddling the winch, when I bore my entire body weight on one of the enclosure buttons on the bottom of my bare feet.  Needless to say I was bleeding badly and in much pain.  Got the first aid kit out, cleaned out the wound, applied some antibiotic cream, pads and taped the foot tightly to stop the bleeding.  On went a sock and proper footwear.  My foot was VERY tender to walk on, so I went down to sleep while Walter, Mike, and Mark continued on.

I went right to sleep and didn't wake up until after 4am.

What happened next I somewhat heard, but here is the synopsis.

Winds were still only 10 knots, but the waves were building.
They were only 3-5ft, but very steep.
They were causing the the entire radar dingy arch (and dingy) to wrench back and forth with each wave.

You can see how we fell off in the track above.

The dingy was supported by the dingy arch crane, and cross braced with stainless stainless rods.
Walter also put diagonal lines attached to the boat and the handles on the dingy.

Well the wrenching of the dingy broke one of the handles on the dingy.

All three guys were concerned about losing the arch/dingy, so the decision was made to tack and motor sail as fast as would could north away from the winds/waves that were coming from the northwest.  

The waves would be less as we got closer to shore (we were in the middle of the lake).

Plus on the current course, would risk going into US waters.

They made the turn at ~01:00.

That turn to the north was 20 miles actually further away from the Welland.
We were all concerned about making the Welland for Sat at 7am.

Once the waves settled down we tacked towards Welland (@3:30am) and all was well.
We tried to keep our speed up motoring with the sails up to drive us faster.

At one point in the night, we got a MAJOR override on the jib winch.
We could not unwrap it.
If the winds increased, we couldn't furl in the jib.
We talked about going on deck and rigging a cheater sheet to take the pressure off the loaded sheet.
In the end, we did a head to wind and were able to unload the sheet enough to take out the override.

To keep the sails up, we had to venture further into the lake.
The winds were supposed to swing to the North, but of course they didn't.

Plus we were drifting closer to US waters.

Around noon on we started questioning if we had enough fuel to motor sail to the Welland.

Our last fill up was in Grand Bend.
Unfortunately we didn't record the engine hours.

The boat has a 166L of fuel tank.
The boat manual listed fuel consumption of 3.5L per hour @2,500 RPM.
Doing the math, that would be 48 hours of motoring.
From Grand Bend, we had done approximately 36 hours of motoring.

We dumped our 20L reserve jerry tank into the fuel tank, and the fuel gauge went just past 1/4 tank.
That would be approximately 55L of diesel left.
At 3.5L per hour, we would have 14 hours of motoring left.
We would NOT make it to the Welland.
If we did, we would need fuel to get through the Welland and past.

We made the decision to alter course north again and head into Port Stanley for some fuel.
We called the marina when we got cell service to ensure they were open and that had depth for a sailboat.

We pulled into Port Stanley at 5pm.

Filled up with 133L of diesel

The engine hours were 1582, so we have motored for 72 hours since Midland.

The lift bridge was up permanently for repairs.

... we were underway racing against the clock.

Yet another beautiful sunset.

BOTH Lake Huron and Lake Erie have an abundance of windmills:

We bumped the throttle up to 2,800 RPMs and the chart plotter was saying that we MIGHT make it to the Welland at 7am on Saturday!

This was no longer a delivery, but a race!