Re: Tilt trailer: how? why?
I know this is an old thread but it seems the use of tilt trailers is a dying art. The way I was raised (i.e. baptised in salt water), you did not sink trailers. You backed down until the water was just below the axle. only the rear of the trailer past the axle gets wet; and your feet are dry when you stand at the winch. of course, your car is dry, too.
The trailer typcally would not break (or tilt) when the boat was pulled up to the winch post. This is important for a number of reasons. There's no reason to break a trailer to drain a boat; you raise the tongue. If you must, I suppose you'd pull the boat back some.
Launching: unlatch, and give the boat a slight lift or push, and it would roll back, break (tilt) the trailer and launch. Better have the bow line tied off! I supposed you could use the winch to slow it down but we usually unhooked. A runaway winch handle is a scary thing, too. You also had to be careful on a shallow flat ramp that the bow didn't tilt up too high, or the boat launch too fast, else the bottom of the keel/transom huit bottom with a sickening crunch. Thus the chain limiter is important (although my sole remaining tilt trailer, holding a 13' whaler, doesn't have one, but it's a small light boat).
Retrieving (here's why you have a 20' cable on your winch but you only use the last 3 feet!): trailer at same depth, latch released. Cable at the end of the trailer, hook to bow eye, start cranking. Bow rides up on a steep angle, but at a certain point, like a see saw, drops to level (actually paralell to ramp). Latch and keep cranking until it's snug. because it's easier to crank up "level" than tilted, the balance is important and you don't want it to tilt while at rest and unlatched. We'd often pull down on the bow when it was most of the way up to level it. Getting the boat straight was a real art because it didn't always drop straight down with the keel on all rollers.
As teenagers assigned to cranking, we were eternally grateful for the advent of the power winch. of course, you had rollers on the keel, with some bunks for stability.
With a tilt trailer and some guys lifting, it wasn't hard to "launch" a boat on the yard for painting the bottom. Once you got the transom on the ground you could pull the trailer out, and reverse the process (cranking) to get it back on.
The motor must be up all the way. It is not used in the process.
I can't speak to this process for boats over 19'. And I didn't know anyone back then with an inboard/outboard who regularly trailered. I still launch and retrieve "dry" except on a 21 and it drives me crazy to be in the salt water for those 3 minutes.
Jim: it's "peeves"
