THE POINT ABINO STATION EARLY HISTORY

In 1902, Allan Holloway offered the Buffalo Yacht Club a beautiful piece of property at Point Abino, Ontario, Canada for the sum of $400 to pay off a mortgage on the property.  For his generous gift, Mr. Holloway was elected to Life Membership in the Club. 
The Point was void of houses except for the old Holloway house buried among the trees and a pier which extended out into the Bay from which Holloway shipped sand to Buffalo under the name of The Point Abino Sand Company. Another pier existed on the West Shore and was more often used for shipping as the sand there was more pure and more readily accessible.

The property offered the Buffalo Yacht Club was located on the side of a hill overgrown with trees and shrubs, and had a mule cart path running through it parallel to the water.  South of the property on this road was the Holloway Chapel built in 1894.  The pier on the south side of this property had a dummy railroad which was used to carry sand to be transferred to barges.  A detached crib located south of the range light beyond the channel entrance was used to moor empty and loaded barges.  When enough barges were filled they were hauled to Buffalo. The only access  to the Canadian shore from Buffalo in those days was by water. There was no Peace Bridge, no need for roads.  

Upon receiving the property a 50 x 40 foot frame clubhouse was constructed. The first floor consisted of a lounge, dining room, and kitchen, together with a caretaker’s quarters.  The second floor was laid out for a dormitory.  A veranda ran completely across one side. A windmill erected beside the house solved the problem of a water supply.

For the 1903 season a steward was engaged to take care of the sailors’ needs at the Point. The 1904 season opened with caretakers in charge, and  by August the facilities could not accommodate the throngs of people wanting to stay overnight.  With twenty to thirty people sleeping over, many had to sleep on the floor.

The need for a means to transport non-boat-owning members to the Point was addressed in the spring of 1905 by having  a 54 foot long power yacht built at a cost $4000.00. 

The Vayu, powered by a 60 horsepower engine was capable of driving 12 miles per hour.  She could seat thirty people and was covered with a sun awning suspended on a pipe framework.

A 180-foot barge was sunk in front of the house for use as a landing spot for the Vayu.

Engine problems plagued the Vayu from the time it arrived in Buffalo in 1905 and within a year the Board of Directors suggested looking for a buyer for this power craft. The boat was sold in 1907 at a loss.

In August 1906 King Edward VII issued a special grant permitting the BYC to hold this property and gave the club riparian rights  to a depth of six feet.

CREATION OF A BASIN

Harvey Holzworth, whose family summer home is two houses north of the BYC property, remembers Bob Heussler building the first docking facilities he saw at Point Abino in about 1935, about 60 - 100 feet of wooden section walkway dock over the cribs and the big cement blocks which remained from the old Point Abino Sand Company pier.   According to the records, previous docks were built in 1924 and 1927.

The first channel was dredged by the short-lived Point Abino Yacht Club which pointed the way to future developments.  It was dredged out into the lake from the drainage ditch alongside the Abino Hills Road.  The Township had kept this dug out into the lake about 150 feet to keep the water draining, and the drag line would always throw the sand and muck to the south side, creating a filled in area to the eventual advantage of the BYC.

In 1938,  Rear Commodore Charlie Obersheimer extended this channel out into the lake approximately another 500 to 700 feet, throwing all the sand and muck to the north side of the channel, and creating the semblance of a 30 foot by 80 foot basin.  The  original channel extended along the north bank of what is today "Monkey Island", and  the channel was re-dug approximately every three years by "Old Man" Storm, who dug all the original channels in front of the summer homes along Point Abino Road.  Mike, his son, was his helper and later took over the business his dad started.

In 1948 a wooden dock was added, but otherwise there was little change to the Club's Point Abino waterfront.

About 1960 it became apparent that more mooring space and docks would be needed, and talk centered on how nice it would be it we had a nice long, deep, permanent channel, one deep enough so that the keel sailboats could come in to moor ashore.  A channel would have to be dredged to the north of the dock line, with the cribs protecting the channel from the seas coming in from the south. The ice and storms over the years had moved many of the big cement blocks, which used to sit on top of the Sand Company cribs into the line of the proposed channel.  In 1961 Harvey Holzworth commandeered a bulldozer, a large railroad winch and his amphibious DUKW (World War II surplus) to drag these blocks out of the channel and in between the cribs.  At the same time Commodore Fred Obersheimer located a quarry where the Club could trade sand for stone, and six hundred feet of stone pier were completed, the beginning of the berm as we know it today.

The dock for the 1961 summer season was constructed on pilings and formed a slip with the new berm to the south.  Boats had to enter through the regular Abino channel (north) and then proceed into the new basin which dead-ended to the east.  Since the berm offered the only walkway to the shore facilities, the first boat in was in the best position, and although the last boat to tie up was much closer to shore (which to him was made inaccessible by a stretch of water 12 feet wide),  "the long,long walk" became  part of Abino parlance of those late arriving skippers and their crews who had to make the trek to the shore facilities.  However, water was piped to the docks and plug-in shore current was installed for use on the near docks.

Then, late in the fall of 1962, there was a good three days blow of strong northeast winds which held the water up the lake, and with the seasonal water level already low it resulted in the waterline receding out approximately to the end of our present berm, leaving mostly bare land out that far.  When Harvey saw these rare conditions, he recognized a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity had presented itself for digging the new channel out into the lake.  He quickly line up Mike Storm to get his dragline ready, and called Vice Commodore John Dooley to tell him that it was now or never.  John gave him the go-ahead before the end of the day, and Mike Storm arrived with his dragline at the crack of dawn with the winds still holding strong northeast.  Since Mike had dredged all the other channels, he knew where the soft spots were, and could feel the bottom as he moved the dragline far out into the lake.  When he was  several hundred feet beyond the present end of the berm in approximately four feet of water and with the water about an inch over the floor of the dragline's cab, he started digging.  Mike had to dredge and throw enough dirt back to build an island that he could climb up onto and out of the water before the wind let up and the lake started to rise.  He swung the dragline bucket every 30 seconds all day long, non-stop, until dusk.  The wind was letting up and the water starting to rise.  He turned on the flood lights of his machine and said, "I better get up on top of that island."  He just made it in time.  It was like an act of God, mother nature, and the fast moving of all concerned that enabled the critical phase of digging a new and permanent channel for the  Point Abino Station -- and at such a low cost (Approximately $7000) and so far out into the lake!

The island with the dragline on top was far out beyond the end of the present berm, and as Mike kept digging, the island grew larger and higher, eventually reaching about 12 feet above the water.

After several weeks of dredging, there was a good freeze and the tall island of dirt froze to concrete hardness, requiring the use of dynamite to loosen it up.  At this stage the island of dirt was about opposite the berm.  It was at this stage that a second dragline started dredging along the berm,  and three huge dump trucks, normally used in a rock quarry, were brought in to move the dirt ashore.

It was late December going into January, and the final phases of digging the new channel were moving full blast.  Mother nature again lent a big helping hand by keeping the ground frozen hard.  All the land  from close to the road out to as far as the sand beach and north to the built-up land from the dredgings along the drainage ditch, was all muck, quicksand and cattails.  With the three big dump trucks, two draglines, bulldozer and DUKW in operation, the swamp and cattail area was completely filled in. It was a sight to see -- all seven machines working at once --  but there was nobody there to see it.

Among the first boats to use the new facilities were a dozen deep draft cruising sailboats — the "Deeper than Five" group — whose owners paid for additional dredging and construction of docks along the berm for deep-draft sailboats in exchange for slip rental fees for  for several years.

By 1965 there were 32 requests for permanent berths in the Abino basin, and by 1966 the number was up to 47.  The channel was widened and fifteen finger slips were built to accommodate cruisers.  The docking area along the berm was lengthened to accommodate 18 auxiliaries.  Removable dock sections were constructed and used as stand-offs along the berm to keep the auxiliaries afloat in their slips.  More rock was added to the berm.  The wooden dock on the north was extended and a 'T' was added that could be used by small sailboats.

In the later 1960s about two feets of stone was added to the berm for elevation, and the one-design sailing area was completely redesigned with the development of a turnaround and a dry sailing trailer park for the forty one-design boats.   A new hoist was obtained and installed.

Dredging continued annually through the late 60s and early 70s, and instead of hauling the dredged material away it was used to elevate the strip of land east of the road.  The hope was to protect the property during flood conditions.  The south shore end of the basin was dredged and squared off to facilitate the installation of more finger slips.

The need for a permanent solid berm was dramatized by another sudden storm.  A bond drive for this purpose was started in 1970 and soon was pledged to $51,000.

Phase I of the Master Plan for development of the basin was started in 1972.  Two hundred sixty feet of sheet piling were purchased and installed at a cost of $30,000, with a turnaround added at the end of the berm. The contractor was Buck Wamsley from Port Dover, builder of much of Port Dover's riverfront and known by many Club members.

The bonds sold in 1970 to install sheet piling on the berm were retired in 1975.  Large stones were applied in an effort to minimize the annual winter erosion of the berm.  The north dock and hoist area received some sprucing up and a crushed stone ramp was run to the hoist.  Some dredging was done along the north dock to facilitate shallow draft cruisers.  The north channel was cleared of reeds to allow easier access to the hoist by one-design boats, especially the Highlanders, which fleet was peaking out. 

In January of 1977 the membership approved a $68,000 bond issue to continue the sheetpiling of the berm.  By May, $61,500 in bonds had been sold and a St. Catherines firm started trenching and driving new sheetpiling from the 1972 cut-off to just short of the shore head, a distance of 500 feet.  After capping the piling, it was tied back by steel rods to concrete "dead men" sunk into the berm.  Heavy rock was added to the weather side of the berm to help resist erosion, and the berm was then resurfaced.  Whereas the earlier sheetpiling had been financed by the sale of sand, the new bonds were to be repaid by a member assessment over the following ten years.  (They were retired, however, in  only eight years.)

In 1979 the Club was cited for dredging without authorization as the dock pilings were being "jetted" in place for the upcoming season. "The perch were spawning in the basin," we were told.  This unexpected event led to a "Catch-22" predicament:  under an amendment to the Fisheries Act formulated in 1977 and put on the books in 1978, no one would be allowed to disturb the fish habitat without permission.  For a period of a month thereafter no representative of Fisheries in Environment Canada in Ottawa, nor of the Ministry of Natural Resources in Toronto or Fonthill, would accept the responsibility for issuing such permission.  Each declared that it was the other's domain.  Finally, through the good offices of Earle Blackadder, our Canadian barrister, the signature of a somewhat-removed official was obtained, allowing us to continue the preparation of the basin.  The BYC must have been the first body cited under this amendment since to that point no other party had ever been granted permission to dredge.  Since that time it has always been necessary to plan dredging and dock installation well in advance so permission could be appropriately obtained.