[Rhodes22-list] Pictures and details

[BillyDoc]

Hi Todd,

The hose is actually fairly soft.  And you're right, the keel roller lifts
the centerboard, but at the after end on my trailer, so the forward end
actually hangs down out of the slot a couple of inches with the centerboard
pulled up and secured.  The bunks on the trailer are arranged so they "cup"
the hull, which means that when entering the trailer the boat has to be
floating several inches higher than the keel roller as it enters to clear
the after ends of the bunks, which also clears the slightly protruding
lifted centerboard.

Yours is a real concern, however.  I can imagine being in just the right
depth so a swell drops the boat down onto the bottom with the centerboard
up, or all the way down for that matter, and jams it up against the hoses. 
I think the hoses would give way before the trunk cap . . . but I can't be
sure.  Pounding up and down in a surf is definitely a situation to be
avoided.

It's one of those annoying engineering trade-offs.  You could easily use
shorter hoses and solve the "pounding surf" problem, but then they would
probably work their way up the slot and be less effective.  Or, you could
use shorter pieces of the smaller 5/8" I.D. hoses and they would probably
stay more or less in the bottom of the slot by gravity, but be less
effective at preventing the centerboard from slamming into the trunk sides. 
This latter approach definitely has some appeal.

In our case, sailing mostly on Pensacola Bay in Florida, it's a sandy bottom
(with occasional mud) and I think that wave action that could drive the
raised keel into the sand would just bury the centerboard edge up to the
trunk edge even if the hoses did not give way.  Rocks would be a different
story!  I've screwed up before and found myself in exactly the pounding surf
I describe above, but in a solid keel type of boat (a Contessa 26) and I
didn't like it at all.  On our Rhodes I installed a depth sounder with a
sender near the forward battery precisely to avoid that sort of situation.

Bill



Sprocket80 wrote:
> 
> Bill,
> 
>    That is some pretty stout looking rubber hose.  I thought (without
> looking at a boat on a trailer) the idea was to use a softer 
> hose so it can crush up some longitudinally when the boat is on the
> trailer' and the weight of the boat on the keel roller pushes the c/b up
> into the keel?  I thought the c/b rises up into the keel when on the
> trailer or on blocks, and this is one of the reasons for the pin/slot
> design...but I may be wrong.
> 
> Todd T.
> 
> 
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