Actually, my boat trailer was built for a powerboat. It's a Long Mfg Trailer and I bought it new for my O'Day 222. It came with short extension brackets for the bunks and a thick keel board. What I did was omit the short extension brackets, and installed the 24" brackets that the dealer had in stock. I told them that I didn't want the keel board. I then went out and bought two 2"X10" Pressure treated planks and sandwiched them for the keel board. I attached these planks to the trailer's cross members with three power company lightning arrester brackets. The brackets are galvanized and are used for lightning arrestors, URD/overhead terminations(pot-heads), and high voltage fuses(Cut-Outs). The power companies don't always use these brackets,unless they plan on attaching these devices to utility pole cross arms. So, in most cases they throw the brackets in the dumpster. If you need some, I'm sure the utility stock man will give them to you for the asking. Actually, all you need is the back plate with the two carriage bolts and the nuts w/washers. I used these straps under the cross members and drilled a hole through the sandwiched planks, on each side of each cross member. I then drill a larger hole into the planks just deep enough to countersink the carriage bolt heads so my keel never comes in contact with them. Then I mounted these straps to hold the planks in place. The reason that I used these brackets was to avoid drilling any holes in my cross members. If you're going to make a sailboat trailer out of an old powerboat trailer, you need to take a peek at the cross members from underneath. When the frame on my old Load-Rite trailer bit the dust, I had no idea that the bottom of the cross members were also rotted out with holes, until I took the old trailer apart. Good Luck!
