Alfrankel54 wrote:
I have owned my Getaway for almost 20 years, it's a great boat. The roto-molded hulls are very sturdy but the boat is really heavy! It often takes 2-3 people to pull the boat up, depending on the slope of the beach and how tired and/or strong you and your helpers are.
I figured out a way to help ease the effort of pulling a Getaway up onto a beach, at least to some degree.
Borrowing from the concept in history of the ancient Egyptians using rollers to move the giant pyramids I thought I'd try something like that to see if it would help. I figured if they could move pyramids, I ouught to be able to move my Getaway! I went to Home Depot and bought a couple of lengths of heavy duty 4 inch PVC pipe, fairly inexpensive, then I cut it into 3' lengths. I placed the PVC segments across the track of where I would pull up the boat, using 3 pieces of 3' pipe on each side perpendicular to where the hulls would run up on the beach, spacing the segments about 2-3 feet apart. When I first tried it I was expecting the PVC pieces to roll like rollers for the pyramids. Unfortunately when I laid the rollers down on the sand with a heavy boat on top they did not budge at all! However this is when I accidentally discovered something great I hadn't expected.... when I then tried to pull the boat up I found that the Getaway hulls glides over the stationery PVC pieces much more easily than trying to pull it up onto the sandy beach! It helps a lot, try it.
I later tried burying the pipes in the sand 1/2 way deep, filling them with sand and rocks to keep them in place, i.e. exposing the top half of the pipe which makes a perfect glide. It works great!
A natural approach if you're in the tropics... Bamboo. Polyethylene to bamboo friction non existent particularly when wet. As slippery as goose shonet
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