Getting the boat on the trailer

As you can see I spent Sunday getting the boat on the trailer. Here for the first time is the profile view of my boat. It looks like it turned out ok. The following details how I did it.

Please note that this is AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS step. I put this up for folks to see what I am doing. I assume no liability for other folks using this website as a guide for transferring their boats from sawhorses to a trailer! The safest way would have been for me to hire a long forklift of the kind used at a boat dry storage facility. Also not all the safety precautions necessary for this are presented here.

I bring the trailer around front and get it ready for Elver. I bought it a year ago and parked it out back.

All that needs done, really, is moving the bunks up from the end. I think it was used for a runabout like those commonly seen around the lakes for fishing. Because of Elver's flat bottom it will do fine.

My next step is to jack the boat up onto beams. I got these beams as part of a shipping pallet. It was really tough to get the nails out of them. They appear to be white oak.

She's off the front sawhorses.

Here the beam is resting on the sawhorse.

I got the back of the boat raised similarly. One issue I ran into is for the boat to want to heal one way or the other. It could easily tip over and fall off the beams. This is an extremely dangerous part of the evolution.

To help avoid that problem I put things under the boat to rest on. A key concept here is to make sure that after each step of getting the boat to the trailer that the boat is stable, and that it will stay that way.

One of my jacks started having a problem. The J shaped piece popped off as I was jacking up something. I stopped and welded it back on. I decided on a heavy buildup of weld metal to be sure it wasn't going to come off.

I lowered it on the rollers. Another problem is that the front of the trailer went up in the air as I lowered the back. As I think about it later the boat could have easily rolled/slid off the back of the trailer. At all times I made sure I wasn't under the boat and that I could back out in a hurry if something went wrong. I can always repair or build another boat. If I get hurt it could be a whole different ballgame.

She's now completely on the trailer. This ranked right up there with melting the lead for the centerboard.