Priority = trailer.

Pathfinder build and fit-out project, December ,January…..February

As I write it’s the beginning of a new year and i’m just about to start full time work again to complete and fit out the pathfinder but there isn’t much I can do until I can haul the boat out from under the shelter so that I can get the mast up, work out oar and sculling positions – in fact just about every job I have to do now either entails being out from under the shelter – or taking the shelter roof off ?. What I urgently need now is a trailer.

Where I left things at the end of my 2022 building season was essentially a finished hull except for several details of the fitting out, the mainmast built and been up once and then the boat lifted off the low dolly and back onto it’s original building frame except that iv’e taken the legs off so that the hull now sits about 8 inches off the ground. That height is plenty for me to access the boat and should make things easier as and when I manage to buy an actual road trailer ; hauling the boat out from under the shelter on a very poor and sloped surface just about destroyed the simple dolly that I built – mainly in that it wrecked the castor wheels.

Choosing or finding a trailer.

We always knew that the trailer would be the single most expensive part of the project but the great thing is that it could wait until I really needed it so I always thought that a good suitable secondhand one would pop up on Ebay or one of the buy/sell boat sites. I definitely missed one very good one and one that I thought could be easily modified but that one sold before I could even go and see it – good trailers seem to be at a bit of a premium and I wonder if part of that is many people needing to do what I do which is to keep the boat at home.

I have to say that finding a new trailer has been a very frustrating process and mainly because 2 out of the 3 possible builder/suppliers just won’t take any interest or even reply to my messages : for sure, one of those companies (Lider) who market the ‘Sunway’ brand is a French company but with them I even went to the trouble of composing a message and then putting it through Google translate as well and sending both…..with photographs. The most frustrating part is that there is a trailer building company just 40 miles or so up the motorway but it seems like as soon as they realized that my project might take some thinking about they just stopped responding.

December –

As I write, the ‘where we are at’ with this is that a dealer ‘up-country’ is talking to me about one of their range of trailers – that being one that is said to be 750Kg rated and long enough/wide enough for the Pathfinder – it may still require modification and i’m just getting my head around what I think it will need. Here’s a quick view of what that one looks like just for reference here.

Just as a small technical reminder – the boat is just over 17 feet long (not including the bowsprit) some 6 foot 5 inches wide and is reckoned to weigh around 485 pounds dry – my boat will probably be heavier because I will have a large AGM battery as it’s primary ballast. The way that compares with the trailer is that there would be a very small side overhang of about 50mm each side and an aft overhang which would need end rails to take the lighting board.

One of my main considerations is that we intend to take the boat to France on the trailer and it has to be road legal there – that means it having a lighting board/plate attached to the frame and not the boat, an EU plate and as I understand it some form of EU compliance certificate. Also, from what I have heard, some French port officials can be a bit keen on their beaurocracy and regulations so it all has to be well squared away !.

The technical aspect here is that my boat is non standard in that it has a pair of long but shallow skegs rather than a single central skeg so a major part of the modification will be to have rails and rollers directly under those to take most of the weight of the boat. I suspect also that I will need to make and fit a pair of fixed ‘bunks’ or pads that the forward end of the garboard plank will sit onto and then a removable pair aft to allow the boat to slide on and off the trailer.

January….

Over the winter I missed one decent looking secondhand trailer locally and I did also completely change my mind about which version of the Extreme trailer I thought I would need – basically that i’m now a lot less keen on a roller trailer and instead I think I need a ‘bunked’ trailer to support the plywood hull and that instead of twin skeg rails and rollers it might be best to have the boat sitting on a flat ‘deck’ on the trailer with home made laminated/curved bunks that I take off to launch and retrieve the boat. My source of information for that view is an experienced trailer-sailor owner of a plywood ‘box’ boat who thinks that plastic rollers just tend to point-load a plywood hull and that in the case of my boat that I can better spread out the loads through the twin skegs onto a flat deck and with curved bunks onto the garboard/first plank each side. His advice also was to prepare to completely immerse the trailer by also having a tongue extension bar and when recovering the boat just float it on rather than hauling it on over rollers with a winch.

January again and ‘Dave’ to the rescue.

I think there must be some rule that trying to negotiate British industry will always take multiple telephone calls leaving messages that are never returned or phoning and being answered by the Saturday boy who is on work placement , doesn’t know anything and then passes the caller up through the system until it is answered by the salesman who would much rather not deal with a member of the public. So it was today when I phoned the actual trailer manufacturer mainly to get some information and advice and maybe even order the actual trailer.

Luckily I only acted as ‘pass the ball’ for a few hours before being directed to speak to ‘Dave’ just down the road from us who runs a dealership in west Cornwall and not only knows everything about trailers and how to size them and set them up but who had previously worked for the actual company. Once we’d had a chat and I sent him some photographs of the boat he agreed on which trailer I thought I needed but that he said it could and should be made a bit longer to deal with the boat overhang a bit better and for now it might be best to order the basic frame and get it here and only then work out what trailer gubbinses it needs to actually handle the boat. Given what has happened up until now it felt like a huge step forward – in fact I think the way it might work out is that we’ll most likely pick the trailer up at the end of the month, get the boat onto it in the way I had initially planned and then drive it down to his place for final sorting out.

February.

Finally it all started to happen ; it’s mid February and we’ve just driven down to west Cornwall to go and collect the finished trailer chassis from ‘Dave’ the dealer who should have been easy to find being just off the main arterial route of the A30…….remind me next time that nowhere is deepest Cornwall is easy to find and Dave’s place is down a narrow lane where any two ‘width enhanced’ Cornishmen would have to turn sideways and breathe in to pass each other. Dave’s comment about that way in was that they’ve only gone and changed the entire road layout since it was satellite photographed for Google earth and there was a slightly easier route out that was almost blocked by the lady driver of a ‘Chelsea Tractor’ who gave me my first taste of having to make up for someone else’s lack of driving skills and road awareness. For the record the second incident was in the last hundred yards to our place where cars were not only parked both sides of a narrow lane but on the final uphill section we came face to face with a large and angry driver of a very small car who decided that it was up to me to make way. That’s ‘normal for Cornwall’ by the way where the local meaning of the highway code is ‘anything that doesn’t inconvenience me even for a moment’.

Anyway, the trailer is home, I had a good chat with Dave the dealer about setting it up and it’s now all to do.

February jobs, learn to drive with the trailer and set the trailer up to carry the boat.

We have a difficult situation here in that to even get from the main road to the house we first have a pair of 90 degree turns which both have poor visibility and the second one is both very difficult to see anything coming and is itself a narrow lane where people park badly on both sides, including the pavement and where there’s nowhere for a car and long trailer to pulls to one side. That piece of road then goes through 2 more narrow sections up a steep lane and past a small estate that seems to be full of ‘special’ and aggressive drivers whose idea of the highway code only means anything that doesn’t inconvenience them even for the briefest possible time. Once past that we have to squeeze past another line of badly parked vehicles and make a sharp (90 degree) turn into a shared access drive – thankfully I modified the road end of the drive to make it a bit easier some years ago but that’s only now where things start to get really interesting.

At that point we are only just off the lane and into the short common access drive where we also have to make another 90 degree turn to make the final turn into our own place – my main problem at the moment is that the long trailer hasn’t had time to straighten out and ‘follow the car’ and as such can’t be then towed into the drive. As I write i’m busy removing one old fence support plate, pulling an old fence strainer post ‘angle iron’ out of the hard clay and contemplating having to move the main gate post and part of the fence one side to allow us to make the turn.

At the moment we’re just driving with the trailer to get more used to solving the everyday problems usually of driving which revolve around ‘someone else’s problems’ that seem to become mine when the other drivers neither know the highway code or how to reverse their own car……and in a worse way assume that they shouldn’t have to give way…..ever !

Setting up the trailer.

You’ll notice that the trailer came with no furniture because we both felt that we didn’t know what set up for bunks and rollers would work best and in fact my first plan was to attach a flat deck to the cross members, set up and balance the boat there and only then work out the side supporting system.

So far the jobs look like.

1. Moving the trailer axle forward because at the moment I think it’s too far aft and by moving it at this stage we may alter the trailer’s turning radius…..my feeling is that it’s going to have to be even further forward to balance the load.
2. Fitting an extra cross member (ordered) and fitting a plywood ‘deck’ across the cross members and axle box.
3. Buy new lifting straps, lift the boat and slide the building frame out.
4. Roll the trailer under the boat and have a first look at balancing the load so that I get the correct amount of weight on the tow hitch.
5. Work out and then build the side support (bunks or pads) arrangment.
6. Fit tie down points.
7. Buy and fit a spare wheel and holder.
8. Fit the number plate.
9. Work out , make and fit a rear guide post to align the back of the boat (in the water) with the back of the trailer.
10. Go out for a drive with the whole rig !
11. This morning……mend the mudguard stay one side after trying to pull down one of our (small) trees with it !

With the boat slung from straps and tayckles the build frame comes out…..last time I hope !

New video…..already a bit out of date because i’m now balancing the boat on it’s trailer.