Boat haul-out at the BYC

As October settles over the West Island, the maples along Lakeshore Road blaze their final colors, and sailors at the Beaconsfield Yacht Club begin the bittersweet ritual that marks the end of every sailing season: haul out. For the club’s senior members — many of whom have kept their boats in BYC’s harbour for decades — the process is both a logistical undertaking and an emotional farewell. A farewell to early morning sails across the broad, open waters of Lake St. Louis, to Tuesday and Thursday evening races, to long summer evenings watching the sun sink behind the Châteauguay shore from the club’s “Marinier” deck overlooking the harbor.

The countdown to haul out begins well before Crane Day itself. Experienced BYC members know that preparation is everything, and one of the first items on the checklist is the boat’s cradle — the custom steel or wooden frame that will support the hull through the long winter months ahead. Cradles stored at the yard are exposed to everything a Montreal winter can throw at them: hard freezes, heavy snow, and the brutal freeze-thaw cycles of March that wreak havoc on wood and metal alike. Checking cradles well in advance — ideally a few weeks before haul out — allows time to address any issues before they become urgent. Welds should be inspected, timber checked for rot, padding replaced where worn, and all bolts tightened. A compromised cradle is a risk no sailor wants to take when a large crane is swinging their boat through the air.

Then comes the mast. Most sailboats at the BYC are rigged with tall, slender spars that simply cannot stay up through a Montreal winter. Ice storms — the particular specialty of the Quebec climate — can load a standing rig with hundreds of kilograms of ice, and sustained winds across the open fetch of Lake St. Louis make a stepped mast a serious liability. Dropping the mast requires careful work: halyards, stays, and shrouds must be labelled and coiled, spreaders removed or padded, and electronics like wind instruments and VHF antennas taken down and stored below. It’s painstaking, but sailors who skip it rarely make that mistake twice.

Crane Day itself is one of the great spectacles of the BYC season. A large mobile crane arrives on site, and the yard fills with activity as boats queue up along the dock for their lift. Slings are carefully positioned, and one by one the sailboats rise out of the harbor — dripping, algae below the waterline, suddenly looking both larger and more vulnerable on dry land. The crane sets each boat gently onto its waiting cradle, club staff guide the hull into position, and the stands are adjusted and locked down.

Once ashore on BYC’s dry dock — which accommodates up to 80 boats — the real winterizing begins. Engines are flushed and fogged, through-hulls closed, water systems drained and blown out. Sails come off and head into dry storage. Then, finally, the tarpaulins go on. Blue or grey poly tarps, stretched tight over a framework of wooden battens or PVC pipe, lashed firmly against the wind off Lake St. Louis and weighted at the skirt. It’s not elegant — a winter boatyard never is — but it’s what stands between your beloved boat and a Montreal winter.

Come April, when the ice retreats from the harbor mouth and the first brave sailors begin talking about launch day, you’ll be glad you did every bit of it.