I’m dying to work on my boat but can’t until the boat trailer is setup to move the boat to the garage. So I started by cleaning a stall in my garage. It was super mega hot so I about had a stroke sweeping the dirt out.
The trailer was gone so I setup a little workspace to start building out a “cradle” to hold my boat’s oddly shaped hull.
Almost immediately, the tire guys called and I dismantled my workspace and rushed off to get the trailer. The first thing I noticed was that it’s damn near impossible to back up because the rear of the trailer is far too small to be seen over my truck’s tailgate. (It wouldn’t be a problem if it was loaded with a “regular sized” boat but it was empty and my boat is tiny too.)
After a fair amount of swearing I got the trailer backed into the garage stall. That’s when I discovered the center post (which holds a rusty old hand crank winch and a “y” fitting to carry a sailboat’s mast) blocks my tailgate. It’s just inches too close.
I can unbolt the center post and move it back a few inches. But this will bump into the trailer jack.
Lucky for me, I was planning to replace the jack anyway. I even have the part new in the box from ten years ago! Anyone know how a 1,000 pound jack has a 454 pound capacity? It’s irrelevant because my sailboat is only marginally heavier than a canoe.
Pretty soon I’d removed the center post and the jack. The trailer looks a lot more “stripped” now.
The roller only makes sense on a boat with a keel (which most monohull boats have). My boat is odd and doesn’t have a keel. Might as well remove the roller.
There’s a roller on the back. Still don’t need it. That goes too.
The bunks are old and scruffy and set at the wrong height and angle for my boat and are contrary to the hull’s rocker. They go too.
Here’s all the crap I removed.
What’s left is a skeleton. It’ll probably never be that “clean” again.
I decided I might as well take it to the car wash and pressure wash it. Then when it dries I’ll blast on a coat of silver Rustoleum. (It already has a zillion coats of spray-paint, and that’s fine with me because that’s likely why it hasn’t rusted in all these years. In fact the spray paint over the nuts and bolts probably kept them from seizing up.
If the old spray paint saved me some time, I’ll pay it forward to future me.
So nothing is installed or done because I’m trying to do a nice job. Also a storm blew in and there’s no point in washing it only to tow it on my muddy driveway. Plus I’ve got out of town travel coming up so the whole thing is on hold.
Oh well. Things take time and I’m having fun so far.