The Trailer

 

 

At long last the time had come to take Goldberry off the deck. Actually, I was in a bit of a hurry to get that done since I needed the boat out from under the roof so we could step the mast and take final measurements for the sails. I bought a gently used Karavan brand trailer. It had been set up to carry a small motor boat (no rollers) but it did have four short bunks. I added four rollers, since it is much better for glued lapstrake plywood boats for their weight to rest on the keel, with the bunks just preventing them from flopping over.

Here's Goldberry off her chocks and slewed around to get in line with how we could set the trailer by the deck. At this point the paint is done (except touch ups) but the gunwales and decks are awaiting varnish (they've been primed with CPES).

Everything lined up. The rollers are about six inches higher than the deck. I bought a length of 4" PVC pipe from Home Depot and cut it into three rollers. It worked 3000 years ago for the Egyptians, so it ought to work for us. At this point I was a bit nervous - were the rollers big enough? Would everything hold together (it should, but still...)? And so on.

The bow is on the trailer and the rest of the keel is sitting on three PVC rollers. Everyone is smiling because we knew that it was going to work just fine. Actually, the entire process turned out to be very easy. The boat is light enough that one of us could lift an end to set the rollers in place and the winch did the rest. Our crew for the day was (left to right) my wife Tara, our dear friend Chris (she what she got for going to lunch with us!) and my business partner Don.

 

And here she is, safe and sound on the trailer. Start to finish, about 20 minutes! You might notice that the bow is not sitting on the foward roller. I put the rollers all in line vertically to start. Here the boat is sitting on the two middle rollers. After this shot was taken I lowered the two middle rollers a bit until the boat was sitting evenly on all four. Then I adjusted the bunks until they just touched the hull, but were not supporting any weight.

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