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Randy’s Thistle
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Trailering your boat is the most
destructive thing you can do to it short of throwing it off a building. In the water, the loads are distributed over
a large percentage of the hull, while on the trailer, the loads are
concentrated in a few small areas. The
load is compounded by the impact with road bumps at high speeds. The resultant wear on the boat is
significant. The best way to reduce the
effects of trailering on the boat is to secure everything in one unit and force
it to all move as one construct.
Typically the boat is supported on bunks,
running athwartships, aft of the centerboard trunk, and also on a roller near
the bow on the centerline. Some of the
better systems have bunks running in a fore-and-aft direction along the
hull.
When you tie the boat down to the trailer,
watch your ropecraft. If your piece of ratty 3/16 line holding the oat down
gives way, what will happen? Your goal
is to keep the boat on the trailer. To
do this, you need to stop it from lifting off, and you need to stop it from
sliding backwards. We use redundant
means to hold the boat on. Keep adding
tie-downs until you could cut one loose deliberately without affecting the boat’s
stability on the trailer.
I tie the bow down and forward to the
trailer, by using the painter line and wrapping it around the trailer’s mast
support, tying off with half hitches.
With carpet or foam carefully added to prevent the strap from wearing
into the rail, I hook my amidships strap to the trailer frame. The midships strap is a 1” nylon strap with
a ratchet buckle, designed to snug the boat firmly to the trailer. I have a rope backup to the strap. Pad the straps
and tie down lines, so they do not wear into the boat.
When tying the boat down, use knots that
will not come loose. Good knots are
easy to untie after loading, such as bowlines, trucker’s hitches, and half
hitches.
Anything in the boat that could move or
bang, should be tied off and/or padded. This includes the boom and spinnaker
pole. It is a good idea to remove the
centerboard from the boat and carry it in the car. The centerboard is a 75 pound lever banging away at the front of
the trunk whenever you go over road bumps.
The mast is usually supported at or near
the stern of the boat on a lighting board, and on a forward support near the
front of the trailer. Lighting boards can bounce off the transom gudgeons (if
that is how you hang yours) or the transom wall, and masts can bounce out of
both supports. Tie the lighting board down, and tie the mast down as well.
When tying down the mast and boom, use
multiple loops of line with about 1”of slack between the metal and the trailer
support. Then seize around the lines
with the bitter end of your line, which locks the assemblies together. You now have a rope insulator between the
mast and trailer, with no bits of carpet or rags to come loose and blow
away. You can marry the boom to the
mast in the same manner, or carry multiple masts in the same manner. The castings are locked together, but
insulated from each other.
It is a good idea to always trail with a
bottom cover, if you can afford one.
They help keep the hull clean and free of rock chips. Top covers keep the boat clean and help your
gas mileage by “streamlining” the assembly..
Mast preparation. I normally leave
forestay and shroud wires on the mast, coiling them and tying them down
carefully. It is a good idea to sky
the halyards, by pulling the tails until the other end is jammed against the
sheave in the mast it turns around. This minimizes banging around of the line
and wear on the lines and mast.
Many people use an old sail bag or a boom
bag over the bottom of the mast, to keep the coiled halyards tails and various
shackles etc. with the mast, instead of falling off onto the highway.
You may wish to reinforce the top cover
where it touches the traveler - they tend to wear there.
Another top cover option is to tie it up
to the mast, so it does not chafe against the mainsheet cleat and other gear in
the boat. We use shock cord under the
boat, attached to the frame to secure the top cover. Changes in temperature and humidity will not affect the tautness
of the cover when secured in this manner.
When traveling, you need SPARES. Spare bearings. Spare tires. A spare
wheel. You do not want to be caught
short in Montana with bad bearings and no towns for 250 miles. Keep a small scissor jack from the auto
parts store ($25 or so) for emergencies.
You should carry electrical spare
parts. Seal your connections against
water to prevent shorts. There are
crimp fittings with shrink-tube insulators available from marine stores to
prevent loose connectors. A little
effort here will result in years of trouble-free trailering. The wiring should be mounted in such a way
that the strain on the wire is relieved.
Wrap electrical tape around the wires at all potential chafe points.
Finally, maintain your bearings well. The number one cause of bearing failure in
winches and in trailers is lack of proper maintenance. The bearings are lightly loaded, so the
cause of failure is water entry. Keep
your bearings dry if possible. If not,
you need to repack them every trip.
Make sure that the seals are good so they hold the grease in as the
bearings hat up. On a trip, the
bearings should only be slightly warmer than ambient temperatures.
For
more information, you can email me…
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