Perhaps the experience of having my hull damaged so horrendously has sparked my paranoia, but I figure it is always prudent to add backup protection to any solution —just in case!
| Having prevented the tires and hull from ever coming in contact again by installing wider fenders (see Part 3), I thought that I would also look into ways of minimizing the boat shifting on the trailer.
It occured to me that the tie-down strap that comes with the boat is just that: a tie-down strap. Its basic purpose is to apply pressure downward to keep the boat on the trailer, but it provides little —if any— resistence to lateral movements, no matter how tightly one cinches it. I have tried to illustrate what I mean in the photo at the right. |
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| I therefore began to wonder: what if we were to use two tie-down straps, wrapped all the way around the boat, to the hook holes on opposite sides of the trailer frame? That might provide diagonal pressure so that the boat can't move either up-and-down or side-to-side. The photo at the left illustrates my idea “in theory.”
I consequently started to shop around for tie-downs long enough to encompass the entire stern and put my theory to the test. It wasn’t easy! I went to Lowe’s, Wal-Mart, U-Haul, trailer shops, camping stores, RV dealers. The only product I found that seemed like it would work was a very wide, yellow, 27'-long strap with a huge ratchet. Unfortunately, its hook was too large to fit through the hook hole even once —let alone twice! |
According to my measurements, from a hook hole all the way around the stern and back again amounts to 18'. I finally found at Home Depot a unique strap that was also 18' in length. I figured that I might as well give it a try and bought two of them. They are made by Keeper, have a 500 lb. maximum load limit, a 1500 lb. breaking limit, and boast a sliding ratchet mechanism that you can position anywhere you want along the strap. Price: $14.97 each, sans tax.
| I happily discovered that these straps are actually about 22' long (my guess is that the extra length is to accommodate the ratchets). And both hooks will fit through the holes, even with the original strap’s hook also installed.
You will see in the photo on the right that I have placed the ratchets on the bottom where they will not strike Harried Potter. These ratchets are very useful, and much easier to use than the “hinge” mechanism on the original tie-down. I plan to use all three straps from this point forward, if for nothing else than additional peace-of-mind. |
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Will the diagonal straps prevent a boat from shifting sideways? They will likely help, but as my last outing revealed (see Part 3), even though the straps were ratcheted as tightly as possible, Harried Potter still shifted about 1/2" when going around a steep, slanted curve on the road to my house. Still, with their added security on top of the fenderback solution, my paranoia has abated —at least somewhat (see Part 5).
