Cradle: transport 4000nm? Sell, buy/build new? Sail 365/yr and stay off the hard?

[captain69]

My boat has a custom-made cradle, but her new home port is several thousand miles away. I’m having trouble finding information and pricing about the options. My guess is that it would cost about as much to ship the cradle by slow ship, as it would to just take measurements and have a new one built. But I thought I’d ask here. I’ve never used a cradle before. It’s entirely possible I won’t need one and could just use jackstands on the rare occasion she needs a dry dock. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[rgranger]

My daughter shipped her car from SC to CA
For $400. seems you should be able to flat bed a cradle for under $1000

 

[dlochner]

Where will you store the cradle when the boat isn't in it? That could be the determining factor. The yard you choose may not want or have room to store it. Or they may charge you to store it.

A well made cradle is safer than jack stands, however, if you can leave the boat in the water for years rather than months it might make sense to sell the cradle and just use jack stands.

If you do abandon or sell the cradle get the dimensions, maybe get someone to make a good drawing of the cradle. Then if you need to make one you have the plans. A good welder can build a cradle pretty quickly.

 

[Tally Ho]

My yard doesn’t allow cradles to be left at the marina over the summer…so even though my boat came with a cradle, I never took it with the boat.

Marina provides jack stands for winter storage on the hard, so that is how Tally Ho stays upright all winter.



Greg

 

[PaulK]

Our yard uses jackstands and allows owners to leave their masts up all winter. We've used them for more than 25 years, and gone through 50-knot windstorms. They handle more than 100 boats on the hard each season without cradles. Maybe you can sell your cradle to someone who needs one.

 

[David in Sandusky]

Our cradle is great for the annual haul out and storage through the winter on Lake Erie. But if you only need maintenance haul-outs, and if you local yard will not let you store the cradle for free, I would leave it behind. When the time comes, I doubt having a cradle adds anything to the sale price, especially in an area where there is no seasonal haul out.

 

[captain69]

It’s definitely useful in the frozen north, where the icebergs attack if you stay in the water. It’s probably useful in the torrid Gulf, when the named storms attack (as I think you can trailer a boat on its cradle safer than other land transport options to get well inshore). It’s also useful for moving the boat around without needing the full-rig sling lift— all you need is a forklift/tractor! Aside from that, having customized cradle probably isn’t worth the cost and hassle.

 

[MitchM]

our yacht club allows sailboats on cradles to store mast-up . if a boat is on jack stands, it must be stored mast down. lots of very large boats on cradles store mast-up . some years ago at the state park marina nearby, an owner stored mast-up on jack stands, with no plywood pads under his stands. his boat fell over in a windstorm , damaging 2 other boats pretty badly. some owners of the damaged boats found that their insurance policies on their boats covered 'water borne damage' only-- not damage from a boat being crushed by a neighbor's negligent winter storage plan. the state owned marina did not require owners to carry insurance , and had a clause in the slip contracts excluding all liability on the part of the marina for any thing what soever.

 

[Scott T-Bird]

From the responses, it sounds like the choice between jack stands and a cradle is pretty nebulous and depends more upon the quality of storage provided by the yard. My boat has a cradle surrounding just the keel area and jack stands at the bow and stern. But I just pay for storage and it's up to the yard to decide how to do it - and leaving the mast up is the usual here. The only people I see taking the mast down are those that have some project in mind. I think there isn't any circumstance where I would actually own a cradle unless I were to keep it on my own property. I don't imagine there are many yards that would accept storage of your cradle without compensation and your acceptance of liability, so why would you want that?