So I'm at the lake and the beach wheels are at home in a slight state of disrepair, not an issue as there are several people that can give me a lift to the waters edge
no problems...... until I decide to go sailing by myself, ok so I have to fix up the beach wheels....


then the grey matter started ticking over......


Why is it when we are at the beach we watch powerboats being unloaded, back it down the ramp.... boat floats off and is held and vehicle and trailer drive out.

simple


the trailer 'sinks' during the loading / unloading process and the boat floats on or off as required



I've seen it hundreds of times as most of you probably have as well, where cat sailors seem to have a fight in extracting the beach trolley from out under the boat when launching or indeed when trying to get the wheels back under the boat so it can be brought back up on the beach.....




so can someone explain to me why our beach trolleys float



just asking

Because we need to get enough surface area on the tires so they don't sink into soft sand. To get that surface area, they need big tires. They also need to be light so we can thrown them over our shoulders. These two factors drive what we have today.

The question you should probably be asking, is why don't we back our trailers in to the water to launch the boats?

No, No, No, do not go there!!!

Ian Farrier has designed a trailer for the new F 22 that is designed with carbon and rubber - not sure about the axle and rims, but there should very little stainless, aluminum, or galvanized in the construction. The F 22 supposedly features zero metal in its design & construction.

Fresh water launching and retrieval makes a huge difference, of course.

There are no "easy" answers...

Beach dollies: lots of work, but affords the freedom of not being dependent on a ramp, which in many places, means long lines and/or extra fees.

Ramp launching... Well, it's not easier unless there is no wind and the water is dead flat. Otherwise, it's tough to center the boat on the trailer, as the rear crossbar is significantly lower in the water, and your hulls will typically float over the top of any side rollers you may have. Even if you don't have side rollers, the hulls will easily slide off center as you pull the trailer out of the water.

Corrosion to the trailer due to salt water is another issue, but easily mitigated by a fresh water rinse (although, you can't reach everywhere that the salt water does when the trailer is sunk). One major problem is the tendency of hot bearings to shed their grease and injest cold water (easily mitigated with Bearing Buddies, which are not standard equipment).

Mike

I can understand the concept fully when we are talking pneumatic tyres and the need for ultra lightweight trolleys, obviously we have the problem where the 'floatation' is enhanced by the pneumatic tyres........

but what about the plastic barrel style ......


why are these sealed so that they too float ?
the only logical reason I can come up with is for assistance in structural strength of the lightweight plastic... otherwise I'm at a loss as to why.


So we 'need' a wheel that will move over sand, the pneumatic tyre and the plastic barrel both do this with the slight advantage going to the pneumatic tyre as it has some flex in the tyres sidewalls compared to the rigid plastic wheel.....
equals a slightly smoother ride for the boat




then the grey matter started grinding over.......






not wide enough, weight is unknown, and price wouldn't be all that friendly......



but great potential

I think sinking beach wheels would be much harder to use than what we have now. It would also add to the weight that has to be yanked out of the water. Getting a boat onto the wheels in the water can be a chore, but at least the wheels float and keep themselves under the boat. I can just imagine the scene at the dock after someone lost their wheels to the bottom in 5-6 feet of water on a cold day.



I wouldn't really wanting to be dipping my sail boxes full of gear into the water either.

Ideally, the wheels would be neutrally bouyant so the axle/cradles float right at the surface. I'm thinking a solid/non-pneumatic wheel like shown above and then flotation added to the axle. You definitley don't want the wheels to sink, you just want the axle to sit about six or ten inches lower in the water.

sm

Good idea. Either sinking or neutrally buoyant. If weigth is not sacrificed it would be a great product. Otherwise, i prefer to live with the pain of getting them in and out the hulls, it's not such a big deal really. I guess that the central handle can facilitate that a bit. Also it is probably a bigger problem for skeg hulls?(deeper)

I just push my cat out into slightly deeper water and slide the wheels under without any problem

I normally do mine in deeper water as well. In some situation we use 2-3 people per boat, so I can see the desire for a less buoyant wheel system. If going up and down a boat ramp is the norm, I would suggest the narrower wheelbarrow style wheels seen on A class dollies.

a heavier set of beach wheels would slow Jake down even more than the positively buoyant ones when he sails off with them still attached to the underside.

Maybe we should be developing retractable landing gear?

Richard Woods actually tried that once a while ago. He built wheels into one of his micro-multihull cabin cruisers.
I think it was too complicated to make and added too much weight / drag.
You could probably make an external bracket that attached to the front beam and allowed you to swing the wheels up above the water, but I'm not sure it would look too sexy...

I would give a lot for a good and workable design of such a gear.

When I was starting to build my own cat, I gave it a lot of thought, but never came up with something which could work in a bumpy sea and a striking brake.

I sail always single-handed and because I'm getting older, it becomes harder and harder to pull my cat without beachwheels alone in and out the water. And the limp and soft sandcondition on my spot makes that even worse.

So, any ideas?????????

Ronald,

How much does your Boat weigh? What size wheels are you currently using?

when we camp with our cats, often we will put a set of wheels on top of the front bows (a real pain w/ a spin bridal) and take the wheels to the islands with us. This allows us to pull our cats up on a beach overnight. They are a huge pita and i would never sail with them except for this reason. the windage is extremely noticeable, the weight effects the coe, and they look terrible.

If i needed to take them more than a few miles, i would probably try Hobie Gary's method (a few pvc tubes with boat fenders on them)

My cat, fully loaded, weighs between 140-150 kg. So its a big drag over the sand.

Ofcourse I have a bigwheel (21x12-8) trax with me. I even use that for the transport between my house and the beach (about 1 km).

The problem with singlehanded sailing that you miss a couple of hands keeping the cat at the floodline while you are storing or fetching the trax .

As I have explained some time ago, I cannot leave my cat unguarded too long on the beach.

hmmm.... design a Carbon Fiber, robotic "spider" that can walk under the trampoline, rise up and connect with the four inside corners of the beams (front and rear), lift the cat and walk it up the beach...

Or, motorized/waterproof beach wheels that you control with remote and can drive the boat up on the beach. All you'd have to do is balance...?

or teach some north sea seals how to crew / hold the cat for you / maybe even a few sea lions to "carry" the cat in and out of the water for you.

It seems to me that building a retractable system to bolt to the beams would not be all that difficult. They could include a linkage to turn them sideways as they are pulled up. The design in my head suffers greatly though when such a wide tire is required. It seems it would have to weigh at least 50lbs.

It may be worthwhile in a setting like yours with a frequent need for wheels in a hurry, or in a point to point race that requires transport over land in the middle.