How to get the boat up near the dunes after sailing?????

New sailer just a Hobie Getaway and its almost perfect

It is impossible for one person (or even two - in my case husband and wife) to get it up the incline on the beach even with beach wheels. I am thinking about a honda 200cc three wheeler. Does anyone have any better suggestions???

has anyone ever used (or seen anyone use) a small atv to pull a 400lb cat uphill in the sand?

any thoughts would be helpful

thanks

Mike From Jax

Chuck's at the south end of Delray Beach, and John at Pomano use ATV's.
They drag the Waves and Getaways up and down the beach all day.
Those hulls are soooo smooth.

I'd be nervous doing that with a H16/17/18 without using cat trax...

Skyhooks?

_________________
2015 H16, with spin,
SOLD 1989 Hobie SX18 Sail # 1947 "In Theory..."
'Only two things are infinite, the universe, and human stupidity. But I'm not sure about the former.'

Hi Mike,

I often solo an H14T (about 250 lbs) from a city park here in Tampa that has about a 5 foot incline from the parking lot to the water. The incline and surrounding area have a lot of loose sand, weeds, rocks and even some ruts. It is kinda messy. I found that with my Cat Trax with rubber wheels I could not get my boat back up the incline very easily by myself if I approached it head on. Instead, I zig zag up the incline with the boat on the Cat Trax. I have at about 30 feet of width to work with and found that even after a long day on the water I still have enough energy to do two or three zig zags up the incline by myself. I cover more distance, but it makes the work pretty easy especially with the poor footing. I also provide some entertainment for the occasional fisherman.

Just a thought.

IIRC, Matt posted something about adding extra rope to the trax so that they can be tied to the front and rear crossbars and so positioned at a good balance point for pulling. If you balance the trax so that the boat's weight is even fore and aft and won't shift, the stability lightens the load... somewhat. That's an inexpensive help. You would have to do a search to find the post.

A boat on trax with the cradles and T handle on the trax is essentially a boat on a trailer made for sand! You could winch it to a nearby trailer, pull it with an ATV, use the righting line to pull and harness up a team of horses... or the rest of the family.

This is always a matter of how far you have to pull and where you are going... To a trailer? To a house? To a trailer in a parking lot three football field lengths or more away? To a parking lot just on the other side of high dune?

Interesting post here on backs and boats.

Always has bugged me that boats of all other types are set up with hard-surface ramps and docks to encourage boating, but there are few setups for beachcats. Many beaches around here even have kayak access now.

Here is a short video of my PT-1 Boat Bot still to be refined into a production model. We have used it or similar at Lake Erie for the past couple of years.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGVuAPKpp2E

_________________
Buxton
18' T16 Silent Lightning (16' T2 Hybrid)
11' H16 White Lightning
79' H16 Green Lightning

Ever see "Sharing the Wind"? Worth a look if you haven't seen it, might learn a few new tricks on getting over the sand dunes

_________________
Greg Thomas
Hobie Factory Team