First Skiff Draw before TIBS is even over!

At 4 PM Saturday we were honoured to have Dusty Miller arrive at our booth directly from his stellar performance at The Lake - Roni went to watch and said he was very calm, cool and collected no matter what was happening with his "students" - one quote may have been "try your other left"...

With great ceremony Dusty pulled three winners from our transparent "hat"...

Who wins a beautiful skiff!

First Prize to Paul Gagne of Brampton who has
been cycling by the Boatshop for years!

Many thanks to my long time buddy Dusty!

First Prize (or should we say Grande Prix?) goes to Paul Gagne who has been cycling past and wanting to volunteer in the Boatshop for years! He will receive the unfinished skiff that was in the show but when it has been sanded, filled, varnished and painted to the Epifanes colour of his choice! Now if we can just get Paul to come out and volunteer - to sand his own skiff....

Second Prize goes to Rob Carswell of Terry's Hamer Bay Marina in good old Muskoka, while this is not a "fix" we must say we are quite delighted as Rob had already committed to dig up some antique outboards for donation to our new kids Sea Flea programme!

Here are a few of his choices of second prize...
A Gatsby Membership for 2014 - he would be invited to come along when we go boating in the museum collection antique boats.
Or one of the following 5 items:

Third Prize winner was our own Jim Steeves! One of our long time constantly contributing core volunteers...he gets to pick from Rob's leftovers!

Congratulations to our three winners and many thanks to all of you who generously purchased tickets!

Speaking of tickets - on Friday night our printer ran up the next 300 tickets so we could begin a new skiff draw on Saturday for the remaining unfinished skiff in the shop. By Sunday closing we had sold close to 1/3rd of that draw! If you would like a shot at the next skiff (or Minimax Sea-Flea) better speak up! Tickets are available at the Boatshop any Saturday morning - $10 per.

Here are few more shots of the booth.

Seemed like 100's of our visitors built one of these little hot rods!
You wouldn't believe some of the stories we heard...

Quite a few had built one of these Glen L TNT's as well.

but the real star (not Star), was our newly restored Lightning, "Bolt"

Skiff Draw Sold Out at TIBS!

It's true Folks! The 300 tickets for the raffle to win a skiff built in our Boats 4 Folks, Kids-at-Risk programme were all sold by 7 pm today (Friday 17th) and we will hold the draw to find the winner tomorrow afternoon. Our FAMOUS YACHTING PERSON who will be pulling the tickets will be none other than that giant of the boat handling training world, Dusty Miller!

Draw time will be between 3 and 4 but we are not sure yet whether it will be held at The Lake where Dusty is presiding, or at our booth in the South Foyer.

the unfinished and finished skiffs really tell the story...

and so did this sign today!

Meanwhile we had some great conversations with people who would like to get involved and help move the big vision forward.


Perhaps the biggest hit in our booth is the MiniMax Sea-Flea. It has been unbelievable how many guys have run into the booth saying they built one of these and what fun they had with it.

There is signage in the booth looking for families who would like to build on of these fun little boats in our Boatshop this winter - the response has been such that we had better get at it! Stay tuned as we sort the details out, but if you are interested in doing this yourself better let us know!

This is a real hit with everyone!



great response from this sign

TNT and MINIMAX, two parts of the Hopper Racing Team Fleet!

If you are having a sinking feeling about missing out on this draw - fear not! There are two unfinished skiffs in the shop and we will begin another draw for the second one tomorrow at TIBS.

TIBS the first weekend!

Load-in was quite a feat! Our booth is number 1005 and is in the South Foyer right next to the ACBS traditional booth - great location and next to good friends!

Our scheduled day to have anything that had to go through the main building was Monday and the Lightning certainly fell into that category. As an experiment in getting Bolt down there clean, we wrapped her in a clear plastic film given to us by Blastal Coatings which they use to divide their shop into "booths", danged if it didn't work a treat!



This gives a whole new meaning to "rapper"!

The Glen L TNT at the door...










Once we got the boats into the space we headed home until Thursday for final booth setup. This is the day for bringing signs, display items and the MiniMax Sea Flea in - which wasn't even assembled on Monday!

Nevertheless Saturday arrived and we were ready - of course we were there at 8 am for a 10 AM opening! Once we got going it was great - met some wonderful folks who would like to get involved in expanding our programmes.

K&C booth from east approach...

Amazing how "Bolt" brought in the Lightning sailors! They just loved the job we did on her.

and from the speedboat end, again it was just a riot how the MiniMax brought in dozens of guys
who had built one or more years ago. Even more amazing how many still have theirs - and
they are going to go home and get it out for "their grandkids" - right.

We decided to run a skiff raffle during the TIBS and set a draw date of March 21 - First Day of Spring. There is a slight deviation from previous draws, this time first place winner gets to choose between a finished skiff and a finished MiniMax! Results after 2 days - 60 tickets out of 300 SOLD!

SO, we are now targeting having them all sold by the end of TIBS so we can move the draw up. If you would like in on this draw and can't get to the boat show - better let us know!

Toronto International Boatshow Ahoy!

the RED SKIFF gets some final touch-up
before showtime

What a mad scramble the past week or so! K&C has been given a booth in the foyer of the TIBS right next to our friends ACBS. Your team in the Boatshop has been looking for ways to reach more kids and keep them around longer. To this end we have reinvented our Boats 4 Folks event into a programme in three stages.

Stage One you have seen many times on the blog, "4 kids build a 12' skiff in 2 days - then get in it and row it". While this is a memorable experience and from the feedback we recently had with our Youth Justice Award, occasionally transformational, overall we'd like to see kids back more and longer.



looks like a boat...

and it floats like a boat!

Step Two will be to get these kids out in Bolt, our just restored Lightning Sloop. She is big enough not to scare them and we intend to rig her for full crew handling so everyone has something to do on board.



after more than three years of work, the final touches...

Chris and Anton polish the gudgeons
on Bolt's beautiful rudder.

Step three will be to get them out in a Sea Flea where they are at the controls of a real "race" boat - even if it with just a few horsepower at first. To this end two of our volunteers cut out the parts for a MiniMax Speedboat and will be in tomorrow to assemble it. this will be our Pattern Boat on which we will work our details of kitting and fitting. It will be in our booth at TIBS!

measure, measure, measure - actually read the instructions...
Mike and George begin the MiniMax pattern boat.

then start cutting...and cutting and cutting.

then 3 hours later, a very serious and mature reaction....
you can almost hear the engine scream! Oh wait - that's Anton.

Monday Jan 6th is our only day to get the big stuff into the foyer of the Energy Centre at TIBS so here is your erstwhile team, Wayne, Mike and Jim ready to head off into the second worst weather forecast of the year yet!

Wayne, Mike and Jim, "let's go boating!"