I beat my head against this for a while and finally came up with a 2 point solution that I think will work for us with our 85 lb 10 yr old lab. He and we need a lot of exercise. We not dock hoppers, we prefer to anchor out as much as possible.
This first part, on and off dockside, is proven.
We're PNW boaters which means mostly floating docks, most of them within inches of the same height off the water. For the home port and other floating docks we use the
pet loader stairs off the side of the boat. Pet loader says the stairs are for pets only. I suspect that is a legal CYA statement. I'm 180 lbs and use the stairs with confidence.
This second part, in / out of the dingy at anchor, will be field tested soon.
The dingy is carried on the swim step, the aft deck is high so a transom door is not a real possibility. The boat has a ladder that folds up against the transom for humans to climb between swim step and transom rail. It folds down into the water when needed.
The apparent solution was a ramp from top step of the ladder in it's up position to the swim step. But I had some problems to solve.
- Dog needed a landing platform at the top big enough to make the turn to / from the ramp.
- Dog needed room at the bottom of the ramp to make the turn to / from the dingy.
- Top platform should support dog and human.
- A ramp length that left him enough room for the turn at the bottom was too steep. He slipped on a steep ramp from a high dock to the swim step on our previous boat. After that he wouldn't go near the ramp again.
Hillbilly engineering to the rescue!
A 3/4" ply platform for the top landing, but how to attach it to the top ladder step and have it be strong enough for big dog and human? The ladder steps are teak so I used
threaded inserts in the ladder step and what I'll call turn knobs to secure the platform to the step. Heavy duty plastic knobs with 3/8" coarse threaded rod. Just line up the ply platform, screw the knobs into the inserts and the platform is attached. To make it able to carry dog and human weight two down legs at the furthest aft edge. If you're going to try this "design" you'll have to down legs that match your swim step and how you'll attach to the swim step.
The next problem was that a ramp long enough to be a shallow enough angle to not be too steep for the old boy didn't leave him room at the swim step for a secure turn into / out of the dingy. A ramp short enough was far too steep. I built a ply wood box that rests on the swim step at the right distance from the back end of the swim step. The bottom of the ramp lands on box, the box makes a final step down. We mocked it up at home, a little encouragement and a treat or two and he owns the ramp now!
We were able to find a telescoping ramp that is the right length. It will also serve to get him up to the fly bridge.
I'm still working on attaching the upper ramp down legs and the lower end box to the swim step. I want all of this to be an easy peasy 1,2,3 set up. Not a long involved struggle each time.
I envision that as we rig to depart on a cruise the down leg bottom attachment and the box will be secured to the swim step and left there for the duration of the voyage. That makes the process to use the system each time:
- Launch dingy
- Mount upper platform with down legs
- Drop ramp into position
- One person in the dingy, other and dog come down the ramp
If only weaver dingy davits were as easy to use. Seems I'm constantly having to adjust the stand offs and the motor support to accomodate tube diamater changes with air pressure changes resulting from temperature changes. Or fiddle with tube air pressure until it fits again.
Some astute observers will ask why we don't use the ramp for both transom and side boarding? Well, it's too long for many of the PNW narrow floating docks.
