pulling her out of the water

I live on a canal and have a rather high wooden seawall and a small dock. I need to determine the best way to get a hobie cat out of the water for storage whenever it is not in use. I'm looking for something inexpensive that I can build myself.

One way would be a pair of inclined ways with a winch on the seawall that would let me pull the boat up the incline and out of the water. I can see that this would work to drag it up but I guess rollers (or teflon skids?)would be required in order to allow it to be slid back down.

Another approach might be some sort of inflatable/submergeable dock??

Then there's the consideration of how to secure the boat when the hurricanes are threatening...

Anyone have any good solutions on the best way(s) to do this?

thanx............carey

How high is your seawall?

Kayaks are fairly light, so you may simply have to put a flat roller at the edge of it. Then you can prop one end of the yak on it, lift the othe end, and roll it on. You can even ake do with a smooth piece of wood at the edge of the seawall.

I have a 5' concrete seawall with a davit. But I use the davit only for my zodiac. For the kayaks, I found that it's faster to scoot them on the edge (that where a smooth piece of wood or better a roller is helpful).

Xavier

the seawall is about 40" above the water. I built a PVC guided ramp for my yak, but what I am working on here is how to get the Hobie Getaway catamaran out of the water

Sorry, I was thinking kayaks. I have both a Hobie Mirage and a Getaway (plus a Aventure Island on order )

Can't quite muscle the Getaway over the seawall ! However a couple of wooden ramps and rollers at the seawall, plus a winch 20' land should do the trick.

I keep my Getaway on a mooring, and I'm working on a floating docks to keep the hullls out of the water when I'm not using the boat.

Why not a couple of wooden ramps with carpet on them? The carpet will protect the hulls from damage.

_________________
Dave

Truth is treason in the empire of lies.

Campaign for Liberty

xavier,

The floating docks idea sounds intriguing. Is this something you are building yourself or is it commercially available?

Ideally, whatever solution I end up with would be best if it did not require getting into the water, the bottom slopes away to over my head just 5' out away from the seawall. The other thing that is an issuee is that we have extreme barnacle growth here and if I did use a ramp affair, I would have to stow it out of the water when not in use so as to not end up with a skid surface coated with barnacles!

I'm in love with the Island Adventurer with the amas! It looks like it would be great to use for multi-day touring!

I used to have this same problem in college with my H16. I was very lucky in that I had a group of about 10 guys to help me lift it over the steel sea wall and into the water. I used old life vests to under each hull to protect it from rubbing as we slid it into the water.

Since you probably won't have a large group around every time you go sailing, I have a suggestion that I am working on for myself.

Where I live there are stationarly boat lifts all over the place for large boats. The apartment complex I live in will not allow me to permanantly add anything to the docks that surround it. So, I thought of building a floating boat lift. I am working on obtaining the materials now. I should be able to do it for around $500 with some scavenging. The issue I see for you is getting it high enough out of the water to pull onto dry land for hurricanes. You could do it, but 4 feet is pretty high out of the water...

The boat ramp idea is probably your most effective solution. To kep it out of the water I would make the ramp wider than the boat by about 4' (2' per side) so you can attach a wire to the ramp on each side 3/4 of the way out from the wall. I would then drive 2 posts on either side of the ramp into the ground such that you can mount a pully on them X' high (where X = 3/4 of the ramp length).

Then use a boat winch on both sides to crank the ramp up. If designed properly you could leave the boat on the ramp most of the time. Just some ideas...

_________________
Nick

Current Boat
In the market
Previous boats owned
'74 Pearson 30
'84 H16
'82 H18 Magnum
St. Louis, MO