Trailering Ideas
Everyone go out side, sit down at a distance from the side of your boat on the trailer and think of what you have seen at the marina and see if it applies to what you’re looking at now.
When you were at the marina, you mostly saw power boats being launched and retrieved. Think of what the hull of a powerboat looks like, a planing hull, the sides are straight, the stern is as wide as the mid section and the bottom is flat or has a deep V center with two flat bottoms leading up to the bow where it starts to curve forward. The guys back the trailer half way into the water and attach 10 to 15 feet of line to the boat and with the winch crank it onto the trailer. Think about the trailer, the bunks, if you do not remember that they were perfectly straight then do a internet search for power boat trailers and you will see.
Now what do you see, a displacement hull, much bigger in the middle with nice curved sides and bottom, all of the curves lead to the stern and the bow, the stern was not designed to sit deep in the water but actually out of the water, if you have a waterline stripe it will run in under the stern to it’s very bottom tip. Then there’s the keel, hanging down below all of these curved bottom lines. LOOK at the trailer bunks, curved to fit the shape of the hull.
Do you now think you can retrieve this boat on to that trailer like you’ve seen power boats being done at the marina.
NO! You can not! .. if you are, then you’re applying forces to the boat and trailer beyond their design. Bow eyes become loose on the boat and the mounting bracket of the trailer winch will bend into the up position and appear loose also. Adjusting sailboats on trailers out of the water by winching or sliding with the vehicle brakes is a NO, NO!
Sailboats are much heavier than power boats of equal length and if you’re water ballast then out of the water you’re much heavier.
Sailboats must be floated onto their trailers. You must place your trailer deep into the water so the front of the bunks are 2 to 4 inches below the surface of the water. If you can not achieve this then you need an extension on your trailer so you can!
Placing the front of the bunks under the water surface allows the boat to float up to about 1 to 2 feet from the bow chock.
As stated the winch is not for winching the boat out of the water onto the trailer and the tower is not for keeping the boat from sliding off the trailer as it is pulled down the highway. Your boats bottom is curved and the bunks are curved, your boat will not slide off, but bounce off, so running a strap around the boat and bunks will eliminate this,
So now the front tower with a bow chock becomes a stop for the exact placement of the boat on its trailer. Too far forward and the tongue weight affects the handling of the tow vehicle, too far backwards this affects the handling of the trailer, so the exact placement on the trailer every time is very critical, 1 to 2 inches difference can have problems towing.
After you FLOAT the boat onto the trailer bunks, think of this, your boat is perfectly level floating on the water, but your trailer is on an angled launch ramp, so they do not match up in the vertical dimension but when you pull the boat up to the front trailer stop, the tower and it’s chock, the boat and trailer is in the correct horizontal dimension, but still not in the vertical.
If you float the boat up to this front boat stop, the stern of the boat is floating above the rear of the trailer bunks so when you pull everything out of the water the back of boat moves down onto the rear of the bunks, the forward area resting on the front of the bunks will now act as a pivot throwing the bow up and away from the tower and thus unweighting the tongue and making the trailer unstable towing.
You submerge your trailer, you float your boat up to 1 to 2 feet from the front trailer stop.
Now what you want to do is lift the bow up out of the water thus sinking the stern, this is why the winch must be level or slightly higher than the final boat resting position. The front of your trailer bunks are submerged and wet so the hull will slide on them very easy and with a mooring line attached to the bow a person should be able to pull the boat forward another 6 inches thus lifting the boat bow a couple inches up as they slide on the front of the submerged bunks, now your boat is only 6 to 18 inches from its final resting place. The boat is no longer level, it is starting to match the angle of the trailer on the launch ramp! Attach the winch which is now in easy reach and finish pulling and lifting the bow of the boat up to the pre-determined limit.
As you crank the winch the bow will move forward as well as up, the stern will sink. What would be ideal is for the chock to be in a position above the bow eye so when the boat reaches its final position on the trailer the chock acts as a final stop guide as the bow eye touches the bottom of the chock. If someone is helping you “just crank until the boat eye touches the black rubber trailer stop”.
Your winch will only be lifting a couple hundred lbs.. not half the boat weight, and the boat will now match the angle of the trailer.
Note: I’ve attached a bow roller so I can pull and lift the bow of my Catalina 22 to within 6” of the bow chock thus only making a couple cranks on the winch. If you attempt to do this, place the roller 1/2 to 3/4 inches below the hull so the weight of the hull is not on this roller when towing, it will act as a presure point on the hull as the trailer flexes on rough highways. This roller will help with the lift because when standing in front of the winch you can only pull not lift, the roller will create less resistance than the hull sliding on the front of the bunks, the winch will then lift the hull up away from this roller at it’s final stopped resting position.
