Lash it down, light it up and give it a pull.

Pathfinder project post, finishing the trailer……hopefully !

Blog time, late March 2023 : with any luck this will be the last time I have to talk about the trailer and it’s taken a lot longer and needed many more extra parts than I originally intended : added to that it seems that every time I have bought new parts it’s the new parts that give me a new set of problems. At the end of the day yesterday though I finished with the boat sitting square on the trailer’s deck, the risers and pads up and supporting the garboard plank each side and the whole boat tied down fore and aft. Technically that means that we could take the whole rig out on the road except that I haven’t finalized the insurance or got a spare tire yet. In terms of driving , the car is insured to tow the trailer but the car insurance doesn’t cover any accident or damage to the boat or the trailer so i’m doing those through the boat insurer….and sure as eggs are eggs i’m going to get my partner to read the small print because of what happened one time I insured a boat.

Lashing it down.

Years back, when I worked at a boatyard in north Wales, I once had to deal with a shaky truck driver who had nearly ‘lost it’ when towing a heavy yacht on his transporter rig over the mountain pass of the old A5 ; what had happened is that he’d made it ‘over the top’ nice and slow but was then running a bit fast down the valley when someone pulled out right in front of him. Everything held, except with smoking brakes but he said he’d felt and heard the whole boat shift forward and in fact when we checked it over one of it’s aft restraints had parted completely.

Alight, so that was a big yacht and maybe wasn’t on the best cradle and didn’t have the kind of lashing we see today with professional boat hauliers but yes….it’s not the sailing that’s going to try and kill us but the knobhead Audi’s, BMW’s and ‘ladies who do lunch’ when they do something utterly stupid on the motorway.

The industry standard for most loads now seems to be ratchet straps so I tried a couple of different ones – one from the local farmers/country store and one from the trailer manufacturer…..both rated about the same and both with similar webbing straps. The first problem with the locally bought ratchet strap is that the lower, ratchet section strap. placed the knuckles of the ratchet windlass straight over the plank joint at the boat’s tumblehome where the hull sticks out a bit. Even with an extra layer of foam padding I could just see the ratchet mechanism chewing into the paint and then the hull itself.

Luckily, I found that the lower section of the trailer maker’s ratchet strap was 100mm shorter so the actual ratchet now sits almost clear of the hull and only needs a piece of camping mat taped on to pad the hull. It still leaves a problem, I think, of a lot of potential down-force on the boat’s coaming if I tighten the ratchet down too much…..working on that problem right now.

For the forward strap I tried a completely different approach as whatever system I use goes over the ‘box’ of the foredeck anyway (much stronger) but also needs to act a restraint against heavy braking ; the general rule being to not totally rely on the trailer’s own winch post to hold the boat back. My solution is to use one of my 1 ton lifting straps , shackled directly to the tie down point one side and laced hard to the tie down point on the opposite side – as a rigger it seems a sound approach because I have attached the tie down points aft of where the strap passes over the foredeck and which sits up against the tabernacle and cabin front.

Launching and retrieving – the plan.

Our plan, as suggested by the trailer’s dealer, is to got for full immersion of the trailer and then basically float the boat on or off ; what that will need is a longer push/pull arrangement and what that calls for is an add-on trailer extension draw bar. With an added 3 metre long extension draw bar we get an extra 2 metres of length between the car and trailer (but only when we launch and retrieve) and that should mean keeping the car ‘dry’ and hopefully on a dry part of the slip. That idea completely relies on having a draw bar extension piece that can be fixed on quickly and taken off again as easily before a road tow…..it will only be needed on the slipway.

My design calls for a pair of brackets on the trailer’s own drawbar that will take a 3 meter length of 50 x 50 mm galvanized steel which has it’s own towing hitch and will be ‘pinned’ to the trailer brackets by a pair of M16 bolts. Rather than drilling any holes through the actual drawbar I intend that the aft bracket will be clamped just behind the winch post using a pair of U bolts that I already have and the forward bracket will use the existing jockey wheel bolts which are about 25 mm over length at the moment. As of today (in blog time) I have made a pair of plywood patterns for the brackets made a couple of drawings , with notes, and taken all of that to a steel fabricator in town…..the deal is that they will make the brackets and then send them off for galvanizing.

My last jobs, for now, will be to take all of the loose gear out of the boat, take the mast off because I now need to put it’s rigging on, do a final check and then go out on the road to see how it drives and basically get used to driving with the whole rig. For those who ask we are still some way away from launching and going sailing because first I have to add all of the standing rigging, put the mast up and then ‘measure the hole’ , have the sails made and then add all of the gubbins-y bits that make it all work. We may end up doing that partially on the water during a week of sea trials for which we are starting to work out where to take the boat and what we feel we need is an easily accessed slip where we can also park the car and trailer rather than having to bring the trailer home…..as and when we start WABI’s actual voyage then the trailer will be used to take the boat somewhere and then be taken straight home.

For now…..I think that’s it and my next post/s + video will be about rigging the boat and maybe taking it on the road for the first time.

Best wishesY’awl

For those who haven’t seen it – Trailer Trash Talk video.