Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Flip Your Boat!
Click on the image and it should take you to marks page. If not the link is below
Wow, the stories came in fast last night. As I pondered the flipping of Thayer IV this fall, I have slowly talked myself into a confidence of it looks easy. And all we see in the magazines is how easy it is. Oh boy.. Thanks to the courage of fellow Woody Boater Mark C and his Pal, Sam. He sent this as a moment to learn. Click here if the image did not go to his page.. These sorts of things help more than watching the correct way to flip a boat. But i must say, I would like to find a video of that. But seeing the disasters teaches us more. For example.. having a cocktail party is a set up for some issues.. keep’m coming.. We love Disaster Week!
Same problems as the last one. Support points in the center, no roll control, lines to short to provide adequate floor clearence when vertical.
When you support from the center, the stable condition is on edge. Once it starts moving from flat it will want to quickly go on edge as you have seen. When the support points are spread wider than the boat it will want to sit flat. It will take a lot of effort to rotate it up 90 degrees and then it will want to quickly flop down the rest of the way. I really liked the idea of having the supports on rollers from the last thread.
Hear are two examples of it done well. The first uses wheels, the second a bunch of man power.
I have seen a couple articles about the wheen method, including a shop that uses a metal frame welded in place on each boat. The lots of man power method is like an AMish barn raising and works great if you have a bunch of friends you trust.
Here is the guy who uses the welded metal wheels, you need to read a bit into the article to see it.
http://www.thomasfabandboat.com/woodenboat_mag.htm
One more,
Note that the support poins are spead apart, NOT on the centerline like the two videos of how not to do it.
DURN, this websight is killin mt speling an gramer.
After lifting the boat off it’s supports I always have a person at the sten of the boat gently balancing the boat as support is moved out of the way and I lower the boat’s keel to rest on two old tires that are placed on the floor to line up with the keel. After the boat keel is resting on the two tires, I place an additional two tires the appropriate distance outboard and as I take more weight off the lift straps my assistant gently alows the boat to roll onto the edge (gunnels). I then raise the boat and from the stern roll her flat upside down. I have done this may time with only myself and one other with no mishaps, although I also went thought this learning curve and was very lucky I did have tires in place and I use WIDE straps. Matt these video’s have now taken all the fun out of this operation for you:):):)
Wow, who are these clowns……. 🙂 Yeah that was a big mistake on our part. Thankfully the boat was completely undamaged and never touched the floor thanks to careful measuring! Next time I’ll know how to do it right.
I sure am glad that you waited until Wednesday to post these as we just rolled my Dad’s 1957 Century Colt (same as a Palamino except with a tiny inboard) on Tuesday. He was worried enough the way it was! The two of us lifted it off the trailer and set it on the grass. It rolled right over onto the work dolly and was in the garage within 15 minutes. I guess that is what you get when you stick to 14′ – 15′ boats!!
I a so glad I watched that AFTER we just flipped our’s back!
Their are several good ways to roll a boat , these two videos are not the way…
Smaller boats (boats with narrow beam are easy to roll over by hand and we find that is the best way… We roll most of our boats with man power…. We have done it with as few as 3 people and as many as 20… The boat that was done with 20 never sat on the ground until it was upside down… a 17′ 1942 Century Seamaid. The one video had many people there they should have just rolled it by hand…
We usually offer beer but only after the boat is rolled…
Matt: when you roll the Thayer IV just put out a notice I’m sure you will have plenty of help show up…
We flipped my 17′ chris craft on a piece of truss I hung from a fork loft. Internally in the truss I had welded some rollers and used span sets as slings. Worked great with tag lines with no fear of flop getting out of control.
See the smart guy who was proactive by moving out of the way? Yeah, that was me. I was there to figure out just what it would take to flip my ’49 Riviera…. Needless to say I sold it and decided to stick with working on a ’56 Lyman Runabout – that will not require flipping!