Good advice on the trailer. Last year, we found that Blew Daze had a
need for two new tires. The trailer had been upgraded with the
addition of a second axle, but the tires that were on the new axle
were old and used. (Pamela's ex-husband got frugle) Both tires were
in poor shape with little tread and questionable sidewalls. As an
extra bonus, the "spare" was flat.
Took the rig down to the local Goodyear tire store and had them check
the bearings as they installed two new tires, and converted the best
of the worst to a spare. Seems that we had a bad bearing on one side
of the original axle.
When trailering across country during our move east, the Ryder car
trailer experienced two flat tires (good thing we had 4 to choose
from) and we had to wait for road service. Moral of the story is you
cannot be too careful of the maintenance of tires, brakes, axles and
bearings. Don't forget the hitch too.
My first Rhodes was a used one. The trailer seemed fine, but I was
going to trailer to Michigan from Cincy, so I decided to check the
axles. There were bearing buddies on the axles and I would venture to
say that the wheels had not been off in 5 years. The previous owner
just kept pumping grease into the bearing buddies. Net result was
that I had the slickest brake shoes and drum around. It took forever
to clean up that mess.
Alex
21 Feb 2001
I have some experience in boat transport. I shipped the Rhodes 22,
the Newport 17 and my 95 Jeep GC from Durango,
Colorado to Edenton, NC where Elton accepted delivery for me. The
cost for this 2,250 mile trip on one flatbed truck was $3,800. I had
all kinds of numbers thrown at me, and this was the best deal. You
can search the internet
http://www.truckaboat.com/tspdirect.html and
http://www.movecars.com
can give you some guidance.
I found that there was one group that took your name and boat type,
then lined you up with various haulers, so you could get a rate that
did not include a "to and from" charge. I would look at the car
haulers first, since most boat haulers require a crane to remove the
boat from their cradle type trailers. The car haulers have flatbeds
that accomodate the boat trailer.
If you were to tow it just once, you might do well to contract out
the delivery. But if you are going to move it to your home, then to
the sailing area, you have two moves that will add up. If the boat
will remain at your sailing port all season, then I would go with a
Ryder truck or rental truck to move the boat. Come to think of it,
the Ryder trucks have governors that cut out at 69MPH, and are
underpowered. Then again, where would you get up to 70MPH on the East
coast anyway?
Alex Bell
You want to see my trailer, you got it! Here are 3 links to pictures of my
boat sitting on its trailer.
My trailer is a 1976 Lil Dude tandem axle boat trailer. This was before the
days of the factory Unimatic trailer.
In the pictures, you can clearly see the funnelling guides, the keel guides,
& the bunks. In these pictures, the keel roller assemblies are not
visible. The keel rollers are mounted onto the trailer cross members
underneath & in-between the keel guides. In picture #2 of the above 3
pictures, the aft keel roller would line up with the bunk support strut near
the back of the rear tire. The forward keel roller would line up with the
bunk support strut near the center of the front tire. If you look on P694
of the 2001 WEST Marine Master Catalog, my keel roller & bracket assemblies
are equivalent to the Shipshape model #1229772, 12" wide roller with a
center groove & bracket. There is a nice color picture of the keel roller
assembly & adjustable bracket in the lower left corner of the page. Note
that the bracket has slots for four 5/8-11UNC carriage bolts to mount it to
the trailer frame cross members. My trailer frame cross members have
predrilled holes for mounting brackets like this, but these holes wouldn't
be hard to drill if your trailer doesn't have them.
My centerboard also protrudes slightly from the shoal draft keel. It does
not hurt the centerboard to put load on it while on the trailer. But, with
the center groove in the keel rollers, most of the weight is taken by the
shoal draft keel.
The boat is the strongest at the keel & this is where you want to support
most of the weight of the boat when it's on the trailer. The bunks should
function more like "outriggers" to stop the boat from tipping over. You
need at least two keel rollers in order to make this system work properly.
I've been trailering the boat like this since 1987 & I don't know how long
before that the previous owner used this setup. It's been absolutely
bulletproof for 14+ years & thousands of miles.
Roger Pihlaja
S/V Dynamic Equilibrium
27 Nov 2001
