Dumb boat repair idea

The factory hull weight on my Chaparral was 700lbs. The 85HP Evinrude on it is around 250lbs.

Can I use a standard 2 ton engine hoist connected to the lift ring on the top of the motor block to pick up the back of the boat off the trailer? Or is that too much stress on the transom and/or the motor lift point?

What about rigging a bridle strap to both rear tie down eyes and lifting from there?

I'm thinking of picking the boat up one end at a time and blocking under it to get the trailer out. Leave the boat sitting on a rack of sorts while I refinish the bottom.

Dumb idea or has this been done?

Don't trust me, but I think you can do it.

However, I'd use a long strap and run it underneath as a cradle.

In reply to SVreX:

oh. yeah, that makes all kind of sense. I even have a good strap.

Okay, next question. The boat is in my shop. Shop roof is standard residential trusses with 2x6 ceiling joists. If I put a big 4x6 beam across the top of, say, 8-10 joists and run a chain down to the boat....Do you think it will hold it up? (frankly, this kind of sounds like a bad idea, but just for speculation's sake.)

I usually just dump them on the ground in the yard or dump them overboard at the landing, tie it to the dock, and work on the trailer in the parking lot.

Hanging it long enough to get the trailer out from under it should be fine. The transom takes a amazing amount of load from the engine so holding up the boat isn't a problem.

ultraclyde wrote: In reply to SVreX: oh. yeah, that makes all kind of sense. I even have a good strap. Okay, next question. The boat is in my shop. Shop roof is standard residential trusses with 2x6 ceiling joists. If I put a big 4x6 beam across the top of, say, 8-10 joists and run a chain down to the boat....Do you think it will hold it up? (frankly, this kind of sounds like a bad idea, but just for speculation's sake.)

Officially, yeah hanging a load from a truss is a bad idea. However, you don't have standard residential trusses if the bottom chord is a 2x6. They are usually 2x4. Sounds like they were engineered for an attic floor load.

But you are only talking about 950 lbs. If you spread the load across several trusses, it shouldn't be a problem. You suggested 10 trusses. That would only be 95 lbs per truss. You probably weigh more than twice that, so you'd better not walk in your attic!

I would feel completely comfortable standing under a 950 lb load hung from a sling with the weight spread across 10 trusses.

i put a couple 4x4's in the V part of my trusses and used it to pick a 49 plymouth body off my trailer and it hung there for 2 weeks while i built a frame to roll under it. mine have 2x4 bottoms. not that i would condone such activity, but it worked for me.

Houses in SE Michigan are routinely built with 2x4 trusses on 24" centers. The minimum residential snow load is 30 psf, I think. That works out to 60 lb. per linear foot of truss. I'll bet your roof will hold the boat.

You can remove a boat from a trailer with a floor jack and some cinderblocks. Professional boat movers and marina's without travel lifts used to do this all the time. Simply jack up the boat and put it on blocks.. one in each corner of the transom and one under the lowest point of the bow.. and pull the trailer out till it almost touches one of the blocks.. jack up the boat with the jack, move the blocks, pull the trailer out some more.. repeat as needed.

They use screw jacks here.. if you can get them, that is the safest way to do it.

Taking a boat off of a trailer

I'll have to check my roof, but I do have some storage in the attic and I thought they were 2x6s. Maybe not.

I'd love to have a set of those boat jacks but they'd cost more than my old boat. Being inland they're not real common on the used market.

I've wrenched on the trailer at the boat ramp a little, but it doesn't help for hull work.

I'd love to hang the rear with a wide nylon strap and the front from the bow eye so I could patch the bad spots and paint the hull with a minimum of moving around. Of course I'd probably put some stacked cinder blocks under it with top board as a safety thing when I was working under it.

Why not remove the motor and put it on a stand in the corner of the garage for a couple weeks while you work on the hull? Then you can lift the stern from the motor mount on the transom, and the bow from whatever's convenient there. Gets rid of a 1/4 of your expected load, and gives you better access to the transom for cleaning / etc there.

In reply to the_machina:

I guess I could but I'd prefer not to unhook all the control lines...although I was talking about replacing the throttle cable...

Also, I might actually SEE the rot in the transom instead of being able to con myself into believing it's fine.

Before we pulled the boats out of the water, we always pulled the motor first. No trailer.