Trailers

[daddles]

My Torch lives on a beach dolly. That's great in its place but not a lot of use on the open road. So I've convinced myself that I need a trailer. I want to keep using the dolly. Originally, I was going to get a trailer made to take the beach dolly and boat - you see a lot of them at yacht clubs. Then my wicked side suggested that buying an 8x5 box trailer would be a better move - I can use the trailer for other stuff, I can still carry the boat and when I build 'The Big Boat' (Fulmar or Navigator), the trailer will handle that as well.

I sounds logical to me BUT, if it's so darned logical, why do most of the bods in the yacht clubs have specialist trailers made up to take the beach dolly? Most of them are just box trailers without the box anyway. Am I missing something screamingly obvious?

Cheers
Richard

[Wild Wassa]

Could it be that the other trailers are self launching ?, ... a big plus for heavy dinghies.

When I was with the Sea Scouts, on cradles that fitted over box trailers, we carried, Mirrors Moths and Sabots (only), and all two-up. We had boats on cradles on boats on cradles on box trailers. The three boats are only very small dinghies and extremely light weight. The bigger dinghies had their own self launching trailers.

Warren.

[ 05-09-2003, 01:21 AM: Message edited by: Wild Wassa ]

[daddles]

Not self launching. Specialist trailers that just take the boat and dolly to the carpark. The boat is launched from the beach dolly.

The dolly attracts me because I'm launching off a beach, not a ramp, and a darned shallow beach at that, covered with thick seaweed at the high water mark. I can see me getting the family bus bogged. The only time I've sailed the torch, we were able to get the dolly right under the still floating boat which made retreiving it very easy - we tried pulling it up onto the dolly and failed, then got smart, pushed the boat off shore a tad and ran the dolly in under it. I couldn't have done that with a trailer because the dolly is so close to the dirt. The old Torch is a heavy darned boat. I haven't weighed it yet but my wife and I can't lift it. I suspect my sixteen footer, when built, will be about the same weight.

Cheers
Richard
who should be working but is dreaming about boats

[seafox61]

the idea of a multipurpose trailor is nive but it tends to be a pain switching between uses if one has the money it is easyer to simply have dedicated units
jeffery