If you have a boat, you have boat chores. Ignoring those chores goes a long way to making even MORE boat chores. And I have been bad. I have not cleaned my boat’s hull in a couple of years. It’s a jungle down there.
Of course, I have my reasons, coupled with excuses and I had a bazillion OTHER chores to do all the time so I am bad but I have really great excuses. The boat, like all things, doesn’t care about my sad, little excuses. And, if there is any part of a boat that ignores excuses totally, it is the hull-that-lives-in-the-ocean part. The main excuse I had for that was that my marine ways was broken. And that is true. But also true was that the fact that the original ways were scrabbled together in a couple of days to deal with pressing hull matters over ten years ago. Well over ten years. It was not my best executed project but it worked. Until it didn’t.
Now it doesn’t. I have to make a new marine ways.
The basic concept was sound but, at my age, I need to improve the concept and the outcome. This time the boat will rest out of the water (on the hard) a few additional feet in height. Last time, when I hauled, the boat was out of the water but it was still only about three feet off the hard (rocky foreshore). I had to crawl around on rocks and boulders to scrape and paint. This time I wanna stand.
So today Sal and I clambered down the 100′ cliff to the ‘haul out’ site and took measurements and angles and stretched the tape and used the tools and came away with a better concept. The first ways came out of the water at a 10 degree angle and this one will rise up at a 15 degree angle. That extra 5 degrees gives me a boat about 5 feet off the hard and that means I can work hunched over. Yes, I might up the angle to 16 – 17 degrees and make it full standing room under.
The first ways was limited to basically just an inclined slide. Forty feet of beams that had HDPE on the top (plastic) that the boat hull slid up on. It worked. But this time the 40 feet of new beams will just serve as the tracks for a 20 foot wheeled cradle to ride up on. The cradle will be made of 4×4’s and the track will be made of 6×6’s and so there is a bit of a challenge keeping the cradle on the tracks as it climbs out of the water. The weight of the boat and cradle will hinder the cradle from floating away but, if it can go off the rails, it will go off the rails so I kinda have to figure out a bit of a track/cradle containment system. The good news is that the most I have to worry about is 40 feet.
The biggest of our boats is 22′ long. But friends will likely use the ways so I really should make it ‘good for others, too’. The good news there is that just about everyone out here uses boats under 20 feet. Sal’s is just 16′.
So, instead of just beaching the boat and cleaning the hull while lying on the beach and tipping it one way and then the other, I have decided that it would be better to design, engineer and construct a marine ways complete with a winch to pull the boat up.
I must be mad!
My last winch was an old manual Marpole winch from yesteryear. This one will be electric and have a button.
“So, what are ya waiting for, Dave?”
I need two more 6×6 beams 20 feet long. And, well…..for the heavy lifting and all that, I’d like one of my kids to visit. So, there’s that……..T
There is a real possibility that this is the last you will hear of the marine ways…..
Our Off the Grid Home 
I have a boat. 21 foot Aquarius. Used once, then designated to the âdryâ.Our circumstances are different. I
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Yes. They are vastly different. I need a boat to go anywhere. All you need is a horse. Or pick-up truck. Or, as you are so inclined, an airplane. So you put Aquarius in axxdryaxx?
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You know of course that there are a few people that could provide you with those two missing pieces and they are close to you! So in the meantime, let’s give the boat a “shave and a haircut” with one of your neighbor’s rigs!
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I just discovered your 6 pages of recommended tools and OTG products. It was 8:00 so I lit our 20 year old Pacific Energy fireplace, our sole source of heat. Our wood is delivered every year May June at high water. It is swept off the shores of 50 miles of Thompson River. Much of it is deposited in our bay. It is harvest time.
How long does your Pacific Energy last burning salt water wood?
Kamloops Lake, OTG Steve Barnes
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The stove ‘guts’ last about five years but the ‘guts’ are replaceable. Baffle, rails, bit of this and that. Two years ago we had ‘our stove guy’ redo the door, redo the rails, add a new baffle and away we went. It’s a schlep. He lives in Chemainus. So, the stove goes by small boat and old car, sits for a day or two while he gets to it (we see grandchildren) and then the reverse schlep happens. The stove, sans bricks, still weighs about 200 pounds. But the work involved pales against the work involved logging and chopping and dragging home a bunch of trees. And, anyway, I read that once a log hits salt water, it sucks up a lot of salt. So, this is the path of least resistance for sure.
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using 1 of the rigs of your neighbours would not be a bad idea, you could tick off 1 of your to do boxes
Or we could wait another few years till this chore is done and you tell us all about it
The drag on your boat might be so big by then it will take you forever to drive the boat to the dock or Quadra
Maybe you are lucky that it is not Sal’s boat that needs fixing
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Sal’s boat blew an engine last month. That’s expensive and a challenge. Most people take their boat into the outboard shop who take off the 250lb engine and install the next one. Easy peasy. But not for us. So we just picked up the engine, got it in the back of the SUV and, with a buddy’s crane out here, got ‘er done…mostly….lots of fiddling and tinkering required putting a new motor on an old boat with old controls. We are still fiddling.
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