Anchor a Hobie 16?

Is it possible and advisable to anchor a Hobie 16? The reason I ask is I have access to a lakehouse where I can sail. The problem is the lakehouse has a seawall. While I have a some ramps that I can use to get my Hobie over the wall and back without damaging it, it does take 3 people to do it.

If I could put my Hobie in the water and anchor it while not sailing it would be much easier. I wouldn't leave it in the water any longer than for a weekend.

If this would work without damaging my Hobie I would sink some weight and attach a line to a buoy that would float on top of the water. Then when I wanted to park i would connect a rope from the front crossbar to the buoy and let the boat turn itself into the wind.

If this would work, how much weight would i need to sink to keep my Hobie from moving in a reasonable wind?

Also, there can be powerboat waves in this area during the day. Is that a problem?

Thanks for your help!

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Michael
'86 H16 #91487

Leaving the boat in the water for a weekend is not a problem, although any extended time in the water is not good for a fiberglass boat.



That's your real problem. The boat will rock and shake with every wave, accelerating wear on just about everything. You need to put tension on the rig to keep it from slamming around as well as finding a way to keep the mast from rotating.

Another thing to consider, I think it'll be significantly more difficult to rig the boat while on the water as compared to on land. If you can touch the bottom, it'll be easier, but think about where you stand when you hoist your sails, etc. In most cases while rigging, you stand on the beach around the boat, not on the boat.

sm

Thanks for your responses. Sounds like it is not a great idea to anchor. I'll have to consider something else instead.

May I should get the lakehouse owner (my father) to build me a beach instead! Don't think that will happen, but it would be fun!

Thanks again!

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Michael
'86 H16 #91487

Boat lifts work......



You can get them used for a couple hundred. Just find one that was used for a pontoon boat. I was able to rent one while I was on vacation.

As for rigging while on the water, I developed a system.


1)Get everything laid out on the tramp while the boat is still on the lift. Use a big bungee cord to stop the mast rotation. I just wrapped it around the mast and brought it back down to the tramp.
2)Get the jib up and let it flap in the wind. (A small carabiner on the jib sheet blocks works ok for this)
3)Lower the boat into the water and paddle out.
4) Cleat the carabiner to the jib and use the jib to get out and away
5)Wait for the power boat traffic to get to the other side of the lake
6) Turn it up into the wind
7) Raise the main before the chop gets bad.

The bungee around the mast is a huge help. It's more than a little unnerving to have the mast flopping around every time a wave hits.

The lift idea is great, but here is another alternative.

How tall is your sea wall? A friend improvised a system where he sank a few 4x4 pilings into the water in front of the sea wall. On those, he mounted some rollers and put a few more on top of the wall itself. He then positioned an electric winch (trailer type) at the end of where the boat would be.

When he brings the boat in, he pulls up, hooks up the boat, turns on the winch and it all happens like magic.

Now, he is hauling up a Hobie 21 SE which is SIGNIFICANTLY heavier than a 16, so you could also get away with a manual winch if you don't have power or wanted to save some expense. I rigged a system like that to assist in moving a 16 up a beach solo. Working that manual winch can be a workout, but it does work.

If you do that, one suggestion, don't tie the winch line to the dolphin striker as it was not make for that kind of tension. I fashioned a bridle attached to my forward pylons and that works well.

Thanks for the suggestions. The seawall itself is about 3 feet, but the distance from the top to the waterline is variable depending on the level fo the water in the lake. At the moment the water is down about 2 feed from the top of the wall.

I have some plastic loading ramps that we put down into the water. To get the boat out we used a John Deer as our wench!

This is not the primary location where I sail. While we go to this lakehouse at least 6 to 7 times a year, this was the first time i had taken my Hobie.

Depending on how frequently I decide to take it in the future I think about how to make it easy to get in and out of the lake.

Thanks.

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Michael
'86 H16 #91487

I have been reading with interest this thread. My husband designed and built some ramps for the purpose of getting our Hobie over the breakwater and up into the yard. Now in our case we were only talking a breakwater of less than six inches, not feet like you are dealing with. Still it might give you some ideas. We did not want to have to deal with coming in too fast and worrying about hitting the breakwater hard with the Hobie and doing some damage to the boat. I should mention that we have no beach. The bottom is very mucky starting about two feet from the breakwater. Not something you want to jump off the boat into to stop your forward momentum. These ramps work EXTREMELY well I might add. Since we are not dealing with a great incline we literally sail halfway up them before the boat comes to a stop. Then we can get off, walk up the wooden frame and pull the boat up into the yard. Launching is easy also. Most of the time we turn the boat to face the water, as that is usually the direction the wind is coming from, then push it down the ramps , hop on, and away we go. Here are the pictures and I will tell you what he made them out of.





The frames are wood 2x8's. The rollers are PVC pipe with farm drain tiles slipped over them to allow movement. The PVC pipes themselves do not rotate much, if at all. The pipes are sealed to help the whole ramp to float. The frames were attached to the top of the breakwater with a wooden hinge my husband made. This allows the ramps to float up when not in use, yet sink under the weight of the boat. When the Hobie comes in, usually faster than we would like, we aim for the ramps which are about 4' wide each and it "sails" right up the ramps. How far depends on the speed. Last weekend we came in very fast and it went more than half way up before it stopped. Again, we don't have much of an incline. When the bow encounters the ramps, the ramps will sink under the weight and speed of the boat allowing the boat to continue up the ramp. He left about a 3' open area between the ramps and that allows you to jump off between the ramps if you need to. You may be wondering why there is a gap between the first two sets of rollers and the other four. This gap allows for the curve of the hulls and holds the boat like a cradle.

These ramps are still a work in progress. Ulitmately my husband wants to design a way to raise the back end of the ramps after the Hobie is on so that the Hobie is out of the water completely and can therefore we stored over the water rather than in the yard. Then we can rig it, lower the water end of the ramps, and push off. That is his project for next summer, finding a way to raise the ends out of the water.

So with the high breakwater that you have to deal with you might be able to make a similar ramp system, but I am sure you would need a winch to get it up there as others have suggested.

I hope this gives you some ideas.

Rjack, that is awesome! I love that concept! The wide rollers are certainly more forgiving than my system.
Since I too have a similar issue, I don't have room to store my boat on shore, so need to keep in on the water but not out there floating around.
I built some cradles out of 10' 2x6's, 5" trailer rollers, and 3" bow stops. They are bolted together with spacers to place them 5 1/2" apart, which is the perfect width for standard 5" boat trailer rollers. Each cradle is propped up on cinder blocks under water, and thouroughly tied down to prevent movement. With my system, if the water level fluctuates frequently, it may not be so practical. I do need to adjust it a couple of times over the couse of the season, not too bad. Basically it works ok, but you need to position the boat boat just right, and slide it on. I certainly cannot 'sail' onto my cradle system! And sometimes I do need to wrestle with it.
But it keeps the boat completely out of the water, which is the goal.

This gives me some ideas. I see a modification to my system in the future!

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Jim

2007 Hobie Wave

RJACK22- Very nice!!!!

A suggestion for lifting the water end of the ramps (and boat) for overnight-

Note: edited and design changed slightly since the original post- my late night design had some extra legs.

Join all four frame boards together at the water end with a 2 X 8. Buy two of the cheap plastic dock wheels (see pic of the ones from Overtons below) or some other inexpensive plastic wheel and mount them to the ends of two 8' long (length depends on the depth of water and amount of leverage needed) 2 X 6's. Temporarily support the frame in a near-level position, but with the water ends slightly higher than the bulkhead end (to allow for settling and the over center leg height). With the wheels firmly on the bottom, mark, drill, and mount the wheeled 2 X 6's to the sides of and near the ends of the two outer frame boards, using a single pivot bolt on each one. These "wheeled, pivoting, legs" will support the ramps. Add stops to the legs or the frame boards so the legs can only rotate from just past vertical (the over-center, locked, position) to 45 degrees or so in the opposite direction (depends on the depth of the water). Attach ropes that are long enough to reach a few feet past the bulkhead, to both ends of each leg. Note: if the bottom is very soft you may need two wheels per leg.

In operation you would sail up the ramps as you do now. Then, from the shore, pull the ropes to rotate the legs, one or both at the same time into the "over center" position (and level ramp position), then cleat off the ropes. If you make the legs long enough, there should be enough leg above the pivot to provide adequate leverage. To lower the ramps, you would pull on the ropes that are attached to the opposite ends of the legs, causing the legs to rotate past the over-center, up position, to a position where they no longer support the ramps and/or allow the ramps to settle into the water, to the lowest water level, or to any position you choose.

.

12" dock wheels. $40 from Overtons



Aw, heck, as long as I'm providing my two cents-worth- why not attach some 2 X 8's, 10's, or even 12's in the horizontal position to the tops of the outer frame boards. These would act as "catwalks" (pun intended! ). It would add weight to your ramps, but make it easier to rig, etc. It should have little impact on the legs and each wheel will support 700#. Put some indoor/outdoor carpet or other material on the cat walks to keep them from getting slippery. With catwalks you may be able to eliminate the ropes and only need to push or pull the leg extensions to raise and lower the ramp, boat, and the added weight of your body.

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Alan
'86 H16, Sail #89057

Now what you need are hydraulic jacks that can lift the back of the ramps up after the boat has rolled on them

We want to keep the design super simple if we can and also keep costs down. So even if we just use it the same way we did this summer it is good enough. We just would like to store it over the water so that the mower we hire can do the whole yard and not mow around the Hobie. This summer we just mowed that area ourselves whenever we were up to the cottage. But the Hobie does tend to kill and tear up the grass in that area, especially when we turn it 180º to launch.

One of lake houses near my grandparents' has a boat cradle.

Please excuse the terrible paintbrush illistration. I'm sitting at a crummy terminal in a conference room, so I don't have anyhting better. At the moment

The red lines are supposed to represent the pvc pipe that has been sleaved over the steel bars. They've set it so that the "rollers" are just a hair over the water. Once it's rolled on they lash the boat down.



Basically they have taken a section of the dock and removed the decking, added additional cross bars and put pvc pipe "rollers" over them. I don't have any pictures of the actual setup, but here is my grandparent's dock if that helps you visualize.

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gaaaaa. I'll clean it up this up later. This cheap thin client is lagging big time