Winter Project: Trailer Mods

Starting the job of trailer mods. Looking at the back of the trailer you can still see the mud it picked up from Dove Point a few weeks ago. This happened when the trailer went down the steepest part of the slip but hit the flat bottom of the channel before Tarka was full able to float off the trailer.

If these rear arms were shortened it will allow the trailer to get further down any ramp by the same amount.

The trailer was designed for a longer boat and the vee cutout accommodated irremovable parts of that vessel such as rudder, prop shaft.

Instead of shortening the trailer straight away, I adapted this cutout to create a wooden vee guide to protect the hull from those metal parts, and hopefully provide an underwater guide for the boat that might help during launch or retrieval.

As it turns out the guidance during retrieval worked very well although it seemed that it is only because the trailer was unable to reach sufficient depth that extra guidance was needed.

I’m thinking the mods might go thus:

Cut rear trailer beams in red

New metal blue

Central roller purple

Transport wedge green

The shortened frame will support a new cross member (blue). Mounted in the middle is a single v roller (purple). The roller will lift and centre the hull during retrieve, and being positioned an inch or two below the keel when fully loaded, provide a lower point of contact for a wedge (green) that when rammed in between the keel and roller, will provide support during road transport for the keel as currently the boat overhangs about 3 foot, this will reduce the overhang to about 1 foot.

The lower side frame members currently support the extendable light board brackets, these will still be used although may be shortened to suit.

The material removed will provide metal tubing to fabricate the new cross member. There should be additional spare material that can be used on the next project to build a mount for the new brake winch.

Day #1 Dismantled wooden vee guides