01 June, 2015

Foldable keel support roller on the back of the trailer

Our boat is not a blue water cruiser so the hull is not as thick as one could expect. Since we keep the boat mainly on the trailer, she has to be sitting on the trailer comfortably without any stress, otherwise it could lead to some problems like we found out a very soon after delivery - for more details please check here in chapter 2.

So a dealer modified our trailer from a keel rollers to a bunks, which is much better now. However to spread the load on the aft of the hull, he had to add one keel support roller to the center.
Without that, the hull on the port side of the aft support pad seems to bend inwards too much.
One of our friends who has the same boat also found the same issue. It looks like the hull is thin there.

The keel support roller on a rusted cross member

Because this keel support is pretty high, we had once a problem with launching on a gradual slip. We had to detach the trailer from the hook and move it much more into water to load the boat on it.

To overcome this problem I've made this support roller foldable. So once we will have the same problem, just simply fold the roller and lower the side support pads.

It's made from the original cross member (60x40x3mm). I just cut the ends and welded two small tubes onto each side of the central section to create a pivoting part. Then just drilled the holes for a locking pin and a handle pin and had it hot-dip galvanized.

Working position

Locking pins on both ends

Folded down - holes on both sides for the handle and locking pin

Folded down

From the last picture you can see that folded L-profile has a sharp edge. Hopefully the hull will never touch it. If it does, I will sand it or insert some long screw to the L-profile near the roller against the trailer cross member so the roller holder will stay parallel with the trailer frame.

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