There's nothing wrong with ratcheting, but my team was originally going to use a ratcheting system, but my team found it much simpler to attach a lag bolt to the arm a gate latch to the robot. Whenever we lifted, it would lock in place. We oriented the gate latch such that gravity would keep it open during the match so we could keep our arm down. Then we would deploy the arm and grab the tower. Once we got to about a 45 degree angle to the ground, gravity would act differently on the gate latch such that it would shut and lock once got ourselves to our 90degree hanging position. It was simpler for us than the ratcheting systems we prototyped.
As for lift speed, you won't get as fast a lift speed as other teams with simply one CIM. Many of the fastest lifts this year used a system in which they would disengage the their drive motors and hook them up to the winch in order to lift quickly. You won't be able to accomplish the speed of 1114's lift with just one CIM, but that doesn't mean you can't accomplish something comparable. My team used a BaneBots planetary gearbox (
http://banebots.com/c/P80K-nnnn-0005) geared 12:1, then a custom gear ratio of 3.5:1 in order to optimize a balance of torque and speed. We had some flaws getting properly aligned, but it would only take ~3 seconds to lift given those 12:1 and 3.5:1 ratios.
(It should be noted that this ratio was not pivoting around the axis of rotation. We had a winch attached to the top of the arm that was 24 inches from the pivot point.)