First Sail of Season

We finally got out for our first sail of the season on Sunday. It wasn't a great day for sailing; the temperature was warm, but quite hazy and only 5-8 knots wind.

Susan Hood Trophy Race

We watched the start of the Susan Hood Trophy Race on Friday evening. It wasn't a good day for racing, visability no more than 100 yards and zero wind.

These pics are some friends on a Dufour 34 sistership Penquin's Mother owned by Malcom Little heading to the start. Penquin's Mother is one of 3 Dufour 34's on Lake Ontario.

The Susan Hood Race is run by PCYC and is part of LORC. The race is an overnight race that covers approximately 73 NM between PCYC, Niagara and the Burlington Weather Beacon.

I'll post how they did once the results are in

Finally

We finally sailed VICTURA over to PCYC today. The weather in Toronto has been terrible over the last week. Rain, cool and gale force winds. Today it was cool, about 8 degrees and the wind was backing to 15 knots, but the journey was uneventful. The wind was blowing 12 knots off my slip so it was a little tricky getting her landed, but we managed ok. It's supposed to warm up this week, so we hope to sail next weekend.

Rain, Rain, Rain

We had hoped to move VICTURA over to PCYC by now, but the weather here has been awful. Rain, thunder storms and high winds for the last week. Very unusual for mid-May. The forecast calls for a few more days of unstable weather, so we'll have to wait. Hopefully Saturday or Sunday things will clear out. Cheers!!

Mast Stepping

We were scheduled to have the mast stepped at 8am. The rain and high winds had moved out and it was a perfect day.

However ... problems ensued. When the Mast Crane operator started to lift the mast, there was a loud bang and the lower port spreader broke off the mast. A picture of the broken cast spreader bracket is above. Not sure how this happened. When the mast was being lifted, one of the shrouds snagged the mast dolly and it's possible that put pressure on the spreader and caused it to break; or someone may have bumped the end of the spreader overnight, and caused the problem. Sometimes these things happen in marinas. In any event, we aborted the lift.

Fortunately, and this is a miracle, there was a mast from another Dufour 34 in the yard that had been damaged in shipment to Canada. We were able to remove the fitting from this mast, and after a mad scramble to find a rivet tool large enough to fit the rivets to secure the fitting, we were back in business. Mast up, rigging tuned and sails fitted. Wow ... what a couple of days.

Thanks Rob Wagner for all of your help. We never could have done this without you.

Splash 2006 "What a Day"

Well things started off well on Wednesday. A beautiful day; we built the mast without a hitch. Weather forecast for Thursday however was ominous: high winds, rain, possible thunderstorms.

We launched at about 10:30am, no rain but lots of wind building. My wind instruments weren't working, but when you can hear the wind screaming you know it's bad. The launch went smoothly, and we made it over to a slip bow into the wind. The short trip was a little harrowing in the driving wind, but we made it safely.

We were due on the mast crane at 1pm, so we moved the boat over to the crane. By this time the wind was howelling. With some help, we managed to get the boat over to the wall and tied up without incident. Still no rain, but the sky was looking wicked. About 1:30pm, the Harbour Master called it off saying there was too much wind. Then the rain came. A driving rain from the east.

So we will try again Friday morning at 8am. The forecast says light winds with rain and winds returning in the pm. Stay tuned I'll post again Friday evening if all goes well.