Built In Wheels for the TI

A trailer was not an option. Carts and dollys too hard to attach/ detach and store so decided to design some fold up/down wheels. Now moving about on land is easy.






Two more I could not get to show

This looks like it has the potential to be the coolest wheels arrangement I've ever seen, but I can't tell from your pictures. Can you take a closeup of the mechanism?

Thanks,
Brian

What Brian said, Paranoid!
Some more detailed pics would be great.
Here's what I do to get Dropbox pics to display using a PC:
-Right click your dropbox pic and select "copy Dropbox link"
-Click the 'Img' button in the Hobie post a reply, make sure the cursor is between the Img brackets then right click and paste the dropbox link between the Img brackets.
-edit the dropbox link (ignore my highlighting apostrophes) from after the ".jpg?" by changing the "dl=0" to "raw=1"

Thanks Stringy

The raw=1 does it.

Had to make a caster wheel as I could not find a large salt water resistant one on the market for a reasonable price. Imported a stainless thrust baring for swivel.
All tubing is aluminium.
Used fibreglass to form perfectly hull shaped front cradle and stiffeners for the back struts.

Wheels go up and down in seconds.

Rear wheels are great for assisting car topping and hang in the down position behind the car in transit.

Wheels are all cheap pneumatic plastic hub kayak cart wheels. Don't run very efficiently due to friction axles and possible poor alignment.









Handy for parking on rocks without getting scratches

Thanks Paranoid. Very innovative and unique!

Wow! It took my feeble brain some time to realise that the rear wheels actually swivel in a similar way to the front, and rely on the rear cross-piece to keep the stern up when sitting on the wheels, and presumably also provides some suspension. Clever!

_________________
Tony Stott
2012 Tandem Island "SIC EM" with Hobie spinnaker

Upon further viewing, this is as awesome as I hoped. Great job! You've made pretty much my dream setup. What's the aluminum tubing diameter? Did you need a tube bender or did you do it all by hand?

Thanks,
Brian

The struts are 25mm x 2.5mm I think.

Other parts are tubes from cheap carts that I bought for the wheels. These were 22mm that fit neatly inside the 25mm.
There is a 32mm x 3mm tube between the two rear wheels that the 25mm tube fits into as a cross kayak brace.
Some of the joints are 50mmx30mm rectangular tube.
Rear mounting brackets are 40mm square section with 12mm square tubing inside the hull.
Used rivets and SS bolts.
Used a large ebay sourced tube bender that unfortunately had imperial (inch) grading dies. 25mm bends were therefore imperfect but good enough.
The front cradle was made from fibreglass. Just make a flat rectangle on a soft thin mat on a bench then move it to the upturned boat while it is soft and drape it across the hull to form the exact hull shape. Add some tubes of fibreglass later to stiffen it. Much better than paying Hobies prices for cradles.

After testing I added fibreglass diagonal tubes (the white bits) to stiffen and strengthen the rear struts.
Everything is removable by pulling SS R-pins out.

The project probably took more time than I have spent sailing the boat so far but it makes it much easier to handle the boat esp on my own. Was hoping to rectify this time discrepancy soon but I broke my arm last week and had to cancel holiday plans. Sorry again Tony about Broughton Island.

Heck, no apology needed! I hope the surgery went OK

No doubt we'll catch up with each other down the track

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Tony Stott
2012 Tandem Island "SIC EM" with Hobie spinnaker

I think it will not work with the spinnaker.

I don't see why not, with one proviso. You would need to add a snapshackle to the tack of the spinnaker, and only connect it to the spinnaker tack lines after launching (which would be no big deal as you would need to manually stow the front undercarriage after launching anyway). The tack purchase lines would pass along the deck, under the stowed front undercarriage.
The head of the spinnaker leads straight from the masthead to the snuffer bag.
The sheets lead back to the rear aka (one leading around the front of the mast)

Nope, can't see any issues there

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Tony Stott
2012 Tandem Island "SIC EM" with Hobie spinnaker

Sorry for my comment but I'm trying to fix this.

All I can say is that space and weight are valuable on the water. This is not a solution for my type of use, TI. But thanks for thinking outside the box.

Installing the heavy duty scupper cart coming off the trailer or in the water before landing are still I find the best solution for my TI. I supplement with an additional Sandtrax cart for difficult sand beaches to/from trailer, on rare occasions, left in my vehicle.

_________________
Mark
Tandem Island- 2013
2 - Sports - 2014

No apology needed... it's all good

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Tony Stott
2012 Tandem Island "SIC EM" with Hobie spinnaker

You reminded me that I should find out exactly how much weight I have added so we managed to do that today.

Less than 6 kg for the front. My caster wheel is probably over engineered.
Less than 7kg for the whole rear assembly.
I was more worried about how much wind the wheels catch but I previously stored a cart on deck so not all that much change.
The advantages over a cart or dolly is that you don't have to support the nose of the boat when wheeling it.
You also don't need to get very wet when installing or retrieving the cart from underneath.
No risk of scupper damage.
You can easily deploy, retrieve and stow the wheels from the boat while afloat.

I suspect it would not be worthwhile if you are using a trailer and launching from it. We tend to fully assemble the boat near where the car is parked then wheel it down to the boat ramp and launch immediately. We don't take anything back to the car. This is particularly convenient when alone with nobody to mind the boat in the water.

The space behind the back seat is still mostly clear for gear storage as the wheels hang out over the water. If you stick anything out of course you need to keep it clear of the swinging bits during launch and recovery.

As for the front deck, I have plans to attach racks either side of the front hatch (perhaps in combination with a spray guard) to store an anchor, and emergency gear. Just need to design ways to make them quick to attach and release and easy to store in the car.

Have not tried the wheels on sand yet but I suspect it will be hard work. I do have optional balloon tyres for the rear.