April 20, 2005
What do you do when you want to haul your boat and your only option is to hire an often broken crane at incredible expense? We were faced with just such a predicament. We wanted desperately to get our 31 foot Wylie sailboat out of a poorly protected anchorage during the windy season. We suspected that the wear and tear on our boat would be notable after several months, moored where regular wind chop often combines with swell from another direction. As the trade winds began piping up, along with all the other sailboat owners, we’d cringe while we watch our boats rolling from gunnel to gunnel and occasionally leaping out of the water. Working on our boats under these conditions was nearly out of the question. And we remember the tales of broken gear resulting from the continual motion during the previous windy season.
We watched with envy the trailers on the boat ramp easily yanking runabouts out of the water between boating adventures. If only we could use something like that. Hmmm ….
A frustrated engineer and a frustrated craftsman, who pride themselves on their self sufficiency over the thousands of oceans miles they’ve sailed, can’t help but look to their strengths to come up with a home grown solution. How about a building a cross between and trailer and a marine railway: A marine railway on wheels? The idea had some appeal and soon they had interest from the 20 or so other local sailboats facing the same challenge. They measured and re-measured the water depth and checked the topography at the bottom of the boat ramp and then calculated the tides to figure out how realistic this idea might be. It was a tall order:
These two men, both underemployed in government jobs earning money to continue their world sailing adventures, combined their talents to turn an ambitious idea into reality.
Garth Wilcox, a respected Naval Architect, “busy” from 7:30am to 4:30pm designing work-arounds for crummy kitchen ventilation, put his engineering skills to work on designing. Bob Trahan, a fine wood craftsman, now underemployed repairing rotting church pews and building picture frames, began searching far and wide for parts they could use to fashion a design suited to their purposes. They spent countless evenings and weekends riding around on their bicycles looking through the junkyard and under bushes. They queried friends and acquaintances with a list of items that might make ideal ingredients for such a venture. Ordering parts to be shipped in was out of the question. Eventually they accumulated a stack of rusty metal - discards from old projects- to work with and hauled them to a large field. The level of design complexity and volume of work was easily quadrupled by the very limited raw materials.
Ingredients:
(2) 4 foot by 8 foot sheets of steel sheets 5/8 inches
thick (about 900 lbs)
(2) 40 foot long 14 inch I beams
(2) wrecked axles from an old rusted trailer that had
gone off the end of a pier
A lifting frame for tilting up pre-cast slabs
20 feet of 5” rusted steel pipe
20 feet of 6” rusted steel pipe
Several lengths of 6 inch I beam
Some condemned scaffolding legs
A bucket of ¾ inch stainless steel bolts and nuts
(approximately 160)
200 lbs of welding rods
Wheel nuts
6 Tires
Shackle
Gifts for key contributors to the project
Gallons of iced tea
They called in favors from friends with the right connections or skills to get boat and part measurements, find parts, get them moved, or identify necessary refinements to their design, anything that could help them make progress. A talented welder, also bored at his job welding heavy equipment that should have long since been retired, was keen to lend his support to build a fine example of his welding skill. Together the three of them discussed the design and materials and a project schedule. Finally it was time to begin the manual labor.
On the first day of building, Garth and Bob bicycled to the welder’s shop where the parts had been centralized. In an open field with not a breath of air, wearing long pants in 87 degree heat, Garth and Bob set about learning how to use a torch to cut sheets of steel that were too heavy to move. Within about two minutes of picking up a cutting torch, Garth soon saw flames leaping back towards his hand from a gas leak in the torch tip. They had only just begun the long hard slog and Garth was already bicycling to the hospital to get treatment for second degree burns on his hand! Fortunately his hand healed quickly and was back to normal within about 2 weeks.
Garth and Bob quickly learned how taxing steel cutting would be on their backs as they hunched over a huge sheet of hot steel, trying not to touch them. Each cut took about a minute per inch of steel. Remember the long pants and the 87 degree breezeless heat? Each weekend, they rose at 6am, met for breakfast, then made their way down to the work yard. With a half hour for lunch and a quitting time of 6:45 (just in time to get to the dining hall before closing time), they steadily worked away in the intense heat. Some evenings after work or on the weekends stretched until 10pm. The steel was so heavy that a piece approximately 3 feet by 2 feet was barely moveable and the availability of heavy equipment to move and position pieces was critical.
An overview of the construction process:
Sandblasting the steel sheets or beating rust off the
sheets with hammers
Cutting steel into pieces (100 pieces)
Smoothing edges of the cuts
Coating steel with paint to protect it from rusting
Grinding off paint from steel where welds needed to be
Drilling over 300 ¾ inch holes into cross beams and
frame or rails
Moving the steel into place with heavy machinery
Aligning steel pieces with block and tackle
Bolting cross beams to frame or rails
Clamping reinforcement pieces to hold them during
welding process
Cleaning and welding each seam
Building outriggers onto the rails for adjusting to
various boat widths
Grinding the rust off the axles and cutting them in
half
Placing and welding axles into place
Placing wheel on the axles
Measuring and cutting the uprights that the boats will
tie to and rest between
Measuring and drilling holes in the uprights for
height adjustable bars (for bracing pads)
Welding the uprights
Cutting short lengths of pipe for adjustable bars
Cutting pads and carpeting for bracing against boat
hull
Cutting pads for bracing keel
Welding Trailer hitch
Designing, cutting and welding steel skids to provide
support to the structure when the cross beams are
removed
More grinding & welding
The financial investment to build the trailer was not very high, since most of the parts were salvaged from scrap, although some parts had to be purchased. However, the labor to turn a rusty hulk of useless junk into a valuable vehicle for hauling and transporting a keelboat weighing up to 32,000 lbs was incalculable. The time invested in gathering parts, measuring and designing it amounted to about 8 months overall. The time building took about 6 months of steady work. Slowly but surely they made progress and came to a point they could call completion on a mammoth beast that closely matched its design. But the moment of truth had come – could it actually haul out a large keelboat? To test its load bearing capability before risking their precious sailboats, they hired a crane to place concrete blocks weight about 32,000 lbs onto the trailer, then hauling that massive weight up and down the boat ramp. The trailer groaned when the weight was set upon it, but the test went off without a hitch. Or so they thought. . . They scheduled a haul out of Bob’s boat, Misty Dawn, a 27,000 lb full keel Block Island 40 for the following weekend. As they began to adjust the trailer for the dimensions of the first candidate, they realized that during the load test, the frame had bent. A pitfall of having the designer also fill the role of manual laborer is that he was tempted to cut a corner and decided out of laziness not to bother with a set of reinforcements in the original design. Evidently, they were important. So, the day before the haul out they spent a backbreaking day straightening the trailer with a sledgehammer and a hydraulic press, then welding in those reinforcement pieces that could have saved them a bit of heartache, had they not been tempted to cut that corner.
By the morning of the haul out they were exhausted. But everything was scheduled and the tide was good. Bob, his wife Robin and Garth’s wife headed out to Misty Dawn to ready her for her voyage to shore. Garth stayed ashore to coordinate the ground crew: hooking up a front end loader and towing the massive trailer to the boat ramp, and guiding a team of folks in the water with mask and snorkels to man the pads attached to the uprights, which would support the hull.
Hordes of people gathered at the top of the ramp, cameras in hand, to witness this event, which had the potential to usher in a new era for sailboats or turn into a mess on the ramp. A 30 foot cable stretched between the front end loader and the trailer, to keep the equipment out of the salt water as much as possible. The trailer was slowly backed down the ramp into the water. Garth, in mask and snorkel, made sure it didn’t back off the end of the ramp. He estimated how much water there was at the bottom of the ramp and it looked good. He relayed the go ahead by VHF to the crew afloat. Misty Dawn gracefully made her way towards 4 upright posts that stuck out of the water and a group of frogmen standing by. Under Robin’s gentle hand, she made a regal arrival, but that was the last of her grace as she faced the awkwardness of becoming a boat on land.
In the nerve-racking position as owner of the boat in this vulnerable state, Bob took the lead directing the crew and the driver of towing vehicle. Making sure the keel was aligned on the trailer and readjusting the pads that were attached to the uprights as the boat settled on the trailer kept everyone busy. With the flare of the hull, as the boat settled, the pads needed to be loosened to accommodate the greater width of the hull at deck level. The boat crew climbed off the back into an awaiting dinghy for the short trip to shore. Finally Bob and Garth felt confident that the boat was positioned well, and Bob directed the driver to gingerly back up the ramp. The magnitude of the trailer seemed to grow as this massive hulk emerged from the water. At the top of ramp, they made a brief stop, chalked the wheels, and removed the stretch of cable separating the front end loader from its tow. Soon the front end loader was ready to continue towing Misty Dawn to a spot on land where she would sit, and the steady beeping of the backup signal began as the driver shifted into reverse. Misty Dawn lead a slow parade of bicycles past the 4 way stop at the playing field, past the airport, the fire department, the fuel depot and the power plant. Misty Dawn dwarfed a school bus as they passed port to port.
Fortunately the lack of overhead power lines made for few obstacles, however, a few leaning tree branches required a small detour to avoid taking out the rig. In front of the boat shed where Misty Dawn would sit as she got a little TLC and paint, a crowd set up a line of chairs to watch the rest of the show as she was backed in. Afterwards, everyone celebrated this momentous occasion with champagne and a BBQ as though all the work were done.
Yet getting the boat off of the trailer was a critical step to success since Garth’s boat, Velella, was scheduled to haul out using the trailer the very next weekend. The following day they spent rounding up wood blocks and jack stands to support Misty Dawn in place of the trailer. They slid huge wooden blocks under the keel between the trailer crossbeams. Once they felt the keel was adequately supported, they removed the cross beams aft of the forward axle by unbolting them from the trailer side rails and dropping them out the bottom. Then they placed jack stands at key locations to support the hull and loosened the side support pads that were attached to the uprights. Once this was done they were able to jockey the jack stands around the axles to provide support as the trailer was slid slowly out from under the boat.
Without all the cross beams, the weight of the uprights was significant and skis bolted to the underside of the rails on either side helped to support the shape until the cross beams could be replaced. Needless to say, the trailer did not travel far in this state, but was instead backed into the next lot where the realignment could be done and the cross beams bolted back on. They devoted hours to the tedious process of pulling the rails together with a come-along, then putting in all the bolts that would fit. (Typically the ones on the rails would fit but not the ones on the wheel assemblies and an axle beam required 4 people to move.) Then they used a hydraulic jack to untwist the rails so that the rest of the holes would align, and then they slowly tightened up the bolts with crescent and socket wrenches. They were finally done – but only with the haul out of Misty Dawn!
Garth and Bob spent the next few evenings adjusting the trailer to handle the next customer, Velella, a boat that was completely different from the first: drawing 6.5 feet of water, nearly 10 feet shorter in length and resting on a tiny fin keel. Everyone was worried about whether there was enough water at the bottom of the ramp, yet when Velella motored up to the waiting trailer, the depth was more than adequate. Bright paint added to the trailer centerline and the pad adjustments made alignment easier than the previous week. Yet with Velella being so light at only 10,000 lbs, each time the crew moved to make an adjustment, the keel shifted relative to the trailer and it took a while for her to settle. Props designed to support the aft end of the boat, particularly while it was on the sloped ramp on such a short keel, took extra time to position in the water. After Velella was successfully pulled out of the water and relocated next to Misty Dawn, they repeated the process of supporting the keel and replacing the trailer supports with jack stands. To remove the trailer from under Velella, they needed to remove all the cross beams and realigning them took even longer than they did for Misty Dawn. As they looked at their boats sitting side by side on jack stands on land, they marveled at the magnitude of their accomplishment. But that was only the beginning . . .
Now the real boat work can begin. Launching is expected to be the reverse of this process. A candidate for the first launching is already lined up and buyers for the trailer have come forward.
Check out photos of the construction and hauling
process at:
http://photos.yahoo.com/yachtvelella
Cheers,
Wendy Hinman and Garth Wilcox
S/V Velella (Wylie 31)