So, after 40 blissful years of sailing Hobie Cats off a beach, it looks like I could fine myself in the future having to launch from and store my current boat on a very rocky shoreline featuring a steep bank, probably 10 feet high. The bank is full of riprap, large rocks of about one foot to two feet across ... so not small.
Other issues - straight offshore is north-west so we're facing straight into the prevailing wind and it's about a 6 mile x 6 mile lake .... so we get decent sized whitecaps (one to two feet high probably trough to crest) with a very short wave length. So it's basically BIG chop.
Even launching off a beach, the boat is bucking around pretty good in those waves on a windy day ... so I'm leery of something like a regular boat lift as I imagine the wave action bouncing the boat around and smacking it into the lift.
I thought about some kind of series of PVC pipes around 2x4s with a winch to pull the boat up the bank out of the water but again, I'm worried about the wave action and how I would hop off the boat, somehow leave it bouncing around in the waves while I run up the bank to winch it up. Like I would think it would be pounded against the rocks in seconds, turned sideways and bashed into the riprank on the bank, etc. before I got anywhere near the winch.
Thinking about this keeps me up at night .... so I would love to hear how/if people make these sorts of systems work on a steep, rocky shoreline, or would love any other ideas for a situation like this. Like if we were facing east and sheltered from the prevailing wind and waves, I could see the ramp/rollers/winch thing working .... but facing north-west in those waves ....I worry, I worry.
_________________ Sharkdog99 - (Hobie 14T/J)
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