Good Old Boat Issue 142: Jan/Feb 2022

Skating ThroughWinter For these Lake Ontario sailors, the off-season is full on.

BY DEBORAHKELSO

I t is February in Bluffers Park Marina in Toronto, and Lake Ontario is frozen solid. Winter in these parts can be pretty inhospitable—in 1981, the record-setting low temperature was -24°F. You might think all would be quiet, every boat safely tucked away on the hard, every sailor snuggled in somewhere warm and dry and on land, waiting for warmer days. But then comes the unmistakable clack of a hockey stick smacking a puck, the

shirr of sharp blades on ice, the excited shouts of competition, and there, next to a 1973, 53-foot Spencer ketch called Ocean Spirit that is still in its slip and entirely tented up for the winter, is a perfectly cleared ice rink. At about 110 by 85 feet, it’s bordered by portions of the dock, 2 x 4s, and mounds of snow that Dave Gordon, Ocean Spirit ’s owner, fellow sailors, and friends have shoveled off the 2¹ ₂-foot-thick ice.

Far from fleeing the season, Dave and others live aboard here fulltime, and friends, family, and marina staff gather around Ocean Spirit to skate, play hockey, and enjoy the crisp air. Even Dave’s border collie, Spirit, delights in chasing the biscuit (hockey slang for puck) around the ice rink. It’s a tradition Dave has maintained every winter since 1987, when he was living aboard a C&C 38 in a marina in Oshawa and started a rink there. “That was there for 19 years, imagine that,” says Dave, a retired television video tape recording (VTR) technician and editor at CFTO-DT, who’s been living aboard Ocean Spirit in Bluffers Park Marina for the past 13 years. “My daughter is 30 now, and all of that involved my daughter and two nephews playing hockey. My nephews would bring their whole hockey team on a Sunday—they treated it like a practice and played a whole game with goalies and everything. They were about 10, 12 years old.” So how does a marina fairway turn into an ice skating rink? Dave starts looking at the water closely as the nighttime tempera- tures plummet and stay cold. “Bang, it goes to minus 15 one night.

It’s a Great Lake; it’s moving, and bumpy, and big. And all of a sudden, it will skin over, no wind. And that’s it,” Dave says. “Day two, it’ll be like 2 to 3 inches. On day three, I get about 4 inches, and then I go around the sides of the dock and just tap with a ball peen Dave stops rinkside for a cuppa something warm, at top left. Photo by Steve Roy. The ice rink from above, with Ocean Spirit alongside. The finger pier nearby serves as a rest area, at left. Photo by WyattWilliams.

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January/February 2022

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