THE NATIONAL YACHT CLUB - CRADLE LAYOUT 2014

(Click to enlarge)


October is a sad month for Toronto Sailors as it's the end of our sailing season here which only begins in May..time for the boys (and girls) to put away their toys for the winter.

Cradle layout is a labour intensive endeavour which takes us a day to accomplish.

We run two tractors and work starts at 8am. Using a chart of the East and West Yard which shows the location of each cradle, our first task is to start lifting the stacks of cradles, five or six at a time, and moving them to their general location in either the East or West yard. Each cradle is labelled with the Owners Name, Member Number, and which end is Bow and which is Stern.

The bigger boats are stored in the East Yard so those cradles are bigger and heavier and so the lifts are smaller, two or three at a time.

So we pick a stack...decide how many we are picking up and then four chains with hooks on the end are attached to the four corners of the bottom cradle in the stack and away we go.

The tractor moves the stack to the location of the bottom cradle, we then rotate the stack so the bow is oriented North or South according to the chart, and we drop the stack and unlock the chains.  We then either go back for another stack or reattach the chains to the four corners of the next cradle up from the bottom, lift the stack and place it the location of the bottom cradle..drop the stack, unlock the chains and repeat the process till we are empty then go back for more.

There is a lot of walking and bending up and down so everyone is pretty tired by the time the day is over.

It's also a potentially dangerous job so you need to be careful not to get your fingers or toes caught in the wrong place at the wrong time..steel is very hard..fingers and toes not so much!...we also wear hard hats to protect the old brain bucket..thank goodness because I have personally tested the effectiveness of this piece of safety gear on many occasions doing this job over the years.

Once the cradles are in place its up to the individual owners to set up the cradle and put the pads on prior to Haulout.

Next weekend is Haulout and that is a whole different story..stay tuned!