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srm wrote:
Personally, I wouldn't purposely add water to the hulls. My tow vehicle is only a 4-cyl, so it's bad enough towing a dry boat. Adding another 100 to 200lb would kill my car's performance that much more. Also, if I were going to add weight to the hulls, I'd want it to be solidly held in one spot. A couple hundred pounds of water sloshing around in the hulls could cause handling problems too during braking and accelerating and could throw the trailer's balance out of whack.
Simplest solution is to just slow down. If you know there's high wind gusts and you can feel the trailer getting squirrely don't drive so fast.
sm
I understand your reluctance, and I did not mean to imply that it is something we do on a regular basis.
However, having seen boats/trailer combinations blow over while traveling thru Wyoming, and along the front range of Colorado where we get some wicked down slope crosswinds, it IS something I have done on a couple of occasions.
I don't KNOW that it averted disaster, but it did give me a good deal more peace of mind as we continued our trip home.
Water weighs about 8# per gallon, so 10 gallons in the windward hull approximately doubles the weight of the hull. If your car won't handle an additional 75# you may have an inadequate tow vehicle. I mean really, 75# is the equivalent of a 12 year old kid. The windage of the boat itself is much more of a drag on the towing vehicle than the weight.
I totally agree that the idea that the water is sloshing around as you accelerate and decelerate is a bit of a concern, but as I said, this is not something I do on a regular basis, and when I have had to do it, I have already reduced speed, so being a little more gentle with the gas pedal and the brake pedal is no big thing.
For your consideration, one other thing I did this February on the way from Havasu back to Denver was to tie 40# of sandbags to the tramp where the front crossbar joins the hull. I didn't want to use the water because of the possibility of it freezing inside the hull and creating a problem.
There was a wicked front ( 50mph gusts, travel advisories and all that) blowing west to east as we were traveling north on I-25, After seeing the windward hull lift about 2 feet, and knowing that the wind was blowing in a snow/ice storm rather quickly, I didn't want to just pull over and wait it out, or slow down to the point that it would catch up with us.
There are always options and no perfect solutions, just throwing out ideas for people to consider so that if someone finds themselves in an uncomfortable situation, they will have thought about ways to deal with the problem, and decide on the solution that best fits their particular situation and preference.
Stephen
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I did not take the tramp off for trailering, but I never have had problems before.??? To make it all the better, My wife was behind me in her car watching it all happen. She stoped and yelled "your a dumb ass!"
