Anyone experienced with lifts?

[Pdxstriper]

Hi,

Soon I will take possession of a pilot house trawler. I intend on putting toys on top including RAD eBikes and kayaks. Looking at solutions to get these heavy awkward toys down to the water. The boat does not have a davit up top.

Searching around I've found that there are lightweight lifts capable of ~200 lbs lift capacity made by Forespar, St. Croix, Kato and others. Some are very cleverly designer to mount onto the existing rail systems (which my new boat has).

Wondering if anyone has experience - either good or bad - with these products?

thanks,
Pete

 

[FF]

A pad eye on top of the PH,well mounted can accept a spinnaker pole , or easier to stow an extending reaching strut..

A pair of guys to hold it where needed and a set of blocks from a main sheet with cam cleats should do the job.

 

[DavidM]

I have used Forespar's lift to hoist an outboard motor from the boat rail down to the dinghy. It doesn't lift that high and for your e bike and kayak something that lifts a bit higher would work better to get it up over the rail. You would also need to reeve longer line to make it all the way down to the water.

The Katolift looks like it lifts a bit higher.

David

 

[ABfish]

I bought a St. Croix Little Crane, capacity of 250 lbs., from a TF member. I use it to get my 50 pound kayak off the front deck of my boat. Have also used it for my 70 pound inflatable dinghy.

It's slow, but a lot safer than manhandling these small vessels over my bow rail, as I was doing initially. Maintenance of the Little Crane is nil. It installs easily and breaks down into two pieces for storage in my anchor locker.

 

[AlanT]

Re stowing bikes. We recently switched from regular bikes which were easy to handle and load on our boat, also to load onto our various dinghies over the years.

The ebikes are IMO a different kettle of fish. After delivery of our ebikes we decided early on that there was no way we wanted to load them onto our quite large (14') RIB. So that just left the problem of getting them to the dockside when moored. While we initially thought we would hoist them to the top deck (we have a crane) we quickly realized that a far easier alternative was to simply roll them off the aft cockpit. So depending on your configuration this may be a possibility.

If the above works for you, then the kayaks are a much more manageable challenge, no sharp or delicate bits and presumably rotomolded plastic so pretty durable. They can be pulled up lengthwise on a simple pulley off a pole hinged to the top (as suggested earlier) with little danger of damage to either vessel.
~A

 

[Pdxstriper]

I have the folding RAD Mini4 eBikes. Anticipating the purchase of a new boat, I had heavy duty bags made by my local canvas shop. The bags are waterproof and capable of being lifted by a davit. Folded up and in the bags they are still heavy and awkward. The place to store them is on the roof of this new trawler. Challenge I am trying to solve is to get them on and off the roof! The dinghy is way too small to even consider as an option so my only hope is to lower them onto a dock.

Re stowing bikes. We recently switched from regular bikes which were easy to handle and load on our boat, also to load onto our various dinghies over the years.

The ebikes are IMO a different kettle of fish. After delivery of our ebikes we decided early on that there was no way we wanted to load them onto our quite large (14') RIB. So that just left the problem of getting them to the dockside when moored. While we initially thought we would hoist them to the top deck (we have a crane) we quickly realized that a far easier alternative was to simply roll them off the aft cockpit. So depending on your configuration this may be a possibility.

If the above works for you, then the kayaks are a much more manageable challenge, no sharp or delicate bits and presumably rotomolded plastic so pretty durable. They can be pulled up lengthwise on a simple pulley off a pole hinged to the top (as suggested earlier) with little danger of damage to either vessel.
~A

 

[AlanT]

I have the folding RAD Mini4 eBikes. Anticipating the purchase of a new boat, I had heavy duty bags made by my local canvas shop. The bags are waterproof and capable of being lifted by a davit. Folded up and in the bags they are still heavy and awkward. The place to store them is on the roof of this new trawler. Challenge I am trying to solve is to get them on and off the roof! The dinghy is way too small to even consider as an option so my only hope is to lower them onto a dock.

We also have Rads! Great bikes. Ours are full size so we were never going to get them on a dinghy. Can you stow your weather protected folding bikes on the swim step? With a swim platform which is level with most floating docks, you should easily bridge the gap between boat and dock and they just roll on and off with one of us on the boat and one of us on the dock.