Dougcole
Guru
Hi all.
We installed Trick Davits on our '05 Mainship 400 about 7 years ago and made some modifications to the system to make it more durable. I've posted about this on the TF a few times before, and I've had people ask me for details. I have one of the arms off and on my bench now, so I took some pics to show what I did.
I love our trick davits. They are super easy to use, reasonably priced and overall a good solution for our boat. That said, I have had some breakage issues with them, and that is what i have addressed. I made the first mod five or six years ago and it has worked great. Just did the second mod last week, but I have no doubts that it will also work well.
Again, I want to stress that I like my davits. We have a fairly heavy dinghy (11' Highfield classic with a 20hp Suzuki) and we use it a LOT. We launch/load the tender every day when cruising, sometimes two or three times a day. So our davits live a pretty hard life. Also, Jim from trick davit has been great to work with.
So the problem is that they are made out of Starboard (or similar) and the holes for the pin that the cradle rotates in just don't have enough tolerance, so they split pretty easy. As a solution, I had the four plastic "cams" on the cradles duplicated in 9/16" aluminum. Recently the eyes on the end of the extension arm also cracked so I bought a new extension then made an aluminum reinforcement bracket.
Pics work better for this sort of thing, so see below. One of the pics shows the old extension arm and what happened to it.
We installed Trick Davits on our '05 Mainship 400 about 7 years ago and made some modifications to the system to make it more durable. I've posted about this on the TF a few times before, and I've had people ask me for details. I have one of the arms off and on my bench now, so I took some pics to show what I did.
I love our trick davits. They are super easy to use, reasonably priced and overall a good solution for our boat. That said, I have had some breakage issues with them, and that is what i have addressed. I made the first mod five or six years ago and it has worked great. Just did the second mod last week, but I have no doubts that it will also work well.
Again, I want to stress that I like my davits. We have a fairly heavy dinghy (11' Highfield classic with a 20hp Suzuki) and we use it a LOT. We launch/load the tender every day when cruising, sometimes two or three times a day. So our davits live a pretty hard life. Also, Jim from trick davit has been great to work with.
So the problem is that they are made out of Starboard (or similar) and the holes for the pin that the cradle rotates in just don't have enough tolerance, so they split pretty easy. As a solution, I had the four plastic "cams" on the cradles duplicated in 9/16" aluminum. Recently the eyes on the end of the extension arm also cracked so I bought a new extension then made an aluminum reinforcement bracket.
Pics work better for this sort of thing, so see below. One of the pics shows the old extension arm and what happened to it.
