For these Lake Ontario sailors, the off-season is full on.
Issue 142: Jan/Feb 2022
It 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.
Dave stops rink-side for a cuppa something warm. Photo by Steve Roy.
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 2-1/2-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.
The ice rink from above, with Ocean Spirit alongside. The finger pier nearby serves as a rest area. Photo by Wyatt Williams.
“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 temperatures 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 hammer.” As he taps, he cracks the ice a little, and he can see its thickness in the crack. “It’s black and clear, you can see right through. You can see salmon.”
An afternoon hockey game in full swing. Several of Dave’s friends were Olympic players. Photo by Dave Gordon.
Once the ice reaches about 4 inches, he taps all around where he knows the rink edges will be, testing the ice, and then marks the boundaries. “In about a week it’s a half a foot thick, 7, 8 inches. And it’s go time.” They set up LED lights on poles, add some tunes with a Bluetooth speaker, and people start showing up, day and night, to skate and play.
“The manager skates, he and his kids and wife skate. The marina staff even shovel the rink and go skating. They’re really great,” Dave says. “Last winter we lit it more, we had like 10 lights on it coming off batteries, and we had some really good hockey players here. I have two friends who were Olympic hockey players. These guys, they hear about the rink, and two or three days a week, this is happening. A lot of the guys are retired like me and they show up, two in the afternoon, and by 20 after, we’re playing. Very professional, these guys.”
Spirit, Dave’s border collie, stands on the ice, while Ocean Spirit floats in the background, fully enclosed for winter living. Photo by Dave Gordon.
To add to the fun, a firepit constructed of a heavy sheet of metal and bricks is set up a safe distance away from the boat on the ice. There, the skaters gather around the fire, warming up with the heat of the flames and steaming mugs of hot chocolate.
By February, the skating and hockey parties kick into high gear. It’s what Dave calls the “February highs.” The month is mostly blue skies. The air is cold and dry. It’s rarely windy, and if there is any wind, the Bluffs escarpment helps protect the marina.
Dave’s famous parties start in the afternoon and carry on throughout the evening. No one goes hungry either. Dave has two outdoor vats on the go. One usually contains fresh-cut fries, and the other has mussels steaming in butter, garlic, and sea salt. And in case someone’s had one too many beers, there are plenty of berths on Ocean Spirit to accommodate his guests.
The marina liveaboard team (L to R) Cory, Craig, Tyrone, Al, and Dave, help keep the rink in skating shape. Photo by Colin Slivinskiauld.
On occasion, folks go ice fishing nearby. At the end of the day, Dave and his friends take the catch to the boat and carry on with an old-fashioned fish fry on the ice.
In 2020, during the first winter of the pandemic, Dave says the rink took on a whole new meaning.
“People would say, ‘You have no idea how much we appreciate this. Just to get us out here.’ Hockey is closed down. We’re all hockey players, and just to come down here and play on this pristine ice and shoot on these nets and just laugh, be in the fresh air. You could just feel the emotion in this. They were so appreciative.”
The season lasts as long as the ice. Four years ago, Dave says, it was so cold, the rink was skateable by November, and it stayed that way until just before April. In 2021, the rink lasted till the first week of March.
Dave pursues the puck and Spirit, who is the official puck chaser. Photo by Adam Crawford.
“The sun is the beast in March,” Dave says. “You have to skate in the morning. Not noon.” One day, they skated in the morning, “and by 4 o’ clock the ice was done. The ice was over. So I started peeling off the lights. The next day it’s slush, and by day three it’s on the move. The marina is alive, it’s a body of water that has a lot of energy in it.”
But this time of year? There aren’t enough hours in the day for all the skating Dave and his fellow sailors and hockey players want to do.
“When you get out there on a full moon? I’ll literally set my alarm for two in the morning on a Saturday or a Sunday. Put the music on, and just get out there, it’s like minus 15 or 20, and you stare at this shining glossiness, and it just can’t get better.”
The Scarborough Bluffs on Lake Ontario, where Dave’s boat rests currently, served as Deborah Kelso’s childhood playground. These days, Deb can be found sailing Lake Simcoe on her beloved Grampian 2-34, Panacea.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
