The boat lifted off the trailer that is. In my last post I mentioned it took me a full day to lift the boat off the trailer just an inch or so, I knew I had to have a better way. After much contemplation and racking of the brain, I finally settled on pair of gantries.

While this was a great idea, it turned out it was going to cost a fortune!! I needed 4 hoists and 8 industrial casters and neither of these are cheap. Plus I needed lumber too.

I priced chain hosts first. At least $125 each and I need 4. Casters are at least $40 plus and I need 8 of those. That is $820 plus and that doesn’t count shipping. That could buy a lot of mahogany!

Well, never doubt the power of prayer. I found all the above for a little over $300 and scrounging around my barn I found all but 2 pieces of lumber for the 2 gantry frames. All I can do is say Thank you Lord!

I pulled the boat out of the shop late in the evening to make room to build the gantries. The next morning I started to gather all the parts and lay them out in the shop. The Weatherman was calling for a nice day but storms that night so I had to get these built today and the boat back inside. I knew that once I got started it wouldn’t take that long. But handling all those heavy pieces made for one LONG day.

I added another item to my “I will never do that again” list. Trying to stand up a gantry by myself. While I did it, it took more than one attempt and there was some collateral damage the first attempt. But we are not going to talk about that.

If you look close you can see the second gantry is built and upright minus the wheels. The second one, with wheels installed is standing upright too. Wheels can turn a simple one man job into a bloody nightmare! But being the kind of person to learn from his mistakes, I laid the second gantry down, finished assembling it and waited till help showed up before I tried to stand it up. Of course the fact I was teetering on the edge of exhaustion probably had something to do with that choice too. But about 7 pm it was done and boat was safely back in the shop.

Jumping ahead a couple of days my new strap, not straps, came in. Being the patient person I did take the time to read the invoice and find out why I only had one strap when I had order two. It seems they only had one in stock in Atlanta and the other one was coming from the warehouse somewhere up North in Yankee land. With my luck, it will take a week to clear customs at the Mason-Dixon line.

I wanted to see what happened to the gantries when I put a load on them. I hung two chain hoists, pulled the strap under the boat and tried to lift the back of the boat.

Exciting photos huh? Even though you can’t see it, the boat is just clear of the bunks on the trailer and I can see day light between them. Lifting the boat was almost effortless. I measured the gantry to see if was trying do the splits but found it had just barely moved.

One thing I see I need to change is the braces at the top. Now that I see everything in place I see a better way to brace it. I can give the hoists more clearance and spread the load out more.

While I wait on the second strap I am going to leave it hanging on the hoists. I will measure it before and after I take the load off the boat and see what if anything moves. Assuming no surprises, it won’t be long before I can start getting serious about tearing it apart.