Boat Lift Destroyed by Ice

Boat Lift Destroyed By Ice

February 12, 2011

Last Saturday morning I awoke about 5 AM, way to early to be up given that we were hosting a larger get together that evening that would go well beyond midnight.  Anyway I heard a horrendous noise followed by more strange noises.  It was dark so I couldn't see anything and the house appeared to be fine.  I woke my husband to tell him something strange was happening outside.  He got up to check things out.  It was a loud, cracking, somewhat tinny mixed with a screeching noise.  We determined it was the ice breaking up that can make quite a bit of noise when it shifts and heaves.  Wrong!

While some of the noise was due to the ice giving way, mingled in was the sound of twisting and bending of cold metal through the sheer force of the ice.  Once daylight hit I looked out and oh my gosh!  The damage was horrid!  Damage along our stretch of the waterway was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.  This has been our seventh winter living on the water we have never seen this amount of damage.

Pictured is our neighbour's destroyed boat lift to the south of us.  They just moved in the first of December last year so my heart goes out to them.  The ice ripped one of the supporting spiles of the L-shaped dock.  It literally ripped most of the boat lift from the short end of the L twisting it downwards into the water.  My husband figures that damage alone to this dock is somewhere around twenty thousand. 

Garden Gnome