guardrail gates

[Bosun Higgs]

SWMBO ( who is vertically challenged) bends my ear every time we tie alongside a boat with guardrail gates. I reckon I am going to have to retrofit some to our boat for peace and quite.

Anyone done it? Our toe rail and stanchions are the old style Brit ones ie ally toe rail, stainless stanchions and stanchion bases like the first one on this page

Sources?

 

[Talulah]

The difficulty when introducing gates is getting the two stanchions either side of the gate to remain vertical when the gate is open.
You can buy gate stanchions that have a diagonal brace that goes down to the toerail but there are so many different styles of stanchions that it can sometimes be hard to match.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GATE-STAN...UK_Sporting_Goods_Sailing&hash=item35a46fb471

One option is to add your own brace to the existing stanchions.

You can achieve this by buying 4 new stanchion feet. (Assuming you want one gate on each side of the boat.
You then buy 4 'T' fittings that mount onto the existing stanchions.
Then get 4 lengths of 'L' shaped stainless steel tube made up to provide the brace.

 

[FullCircle]

My Rigger quoted it for cheap, under 200 quid all in fitted. Hardly worth the agg, so mine is being done this winter.
Mutter,mutter, could have ordered it with the boat for £150 quid when new. Mutter mutter.

 

[Deleted member 36384]

http://www.cooneymarine.co.uk/pages/tube-bending.html

The above do stainless tube bending and the video is impressive. If you needed custom tube bent they could certainly do it.

For example a strut could be bent such that it fits into the stanchion socket on the toe rail, traverses at 60 degrees to the gate stanchion and then bends vertical. Through bolt onto the gate stanchion with a cap on the tube and plastic (teak) saddle between the stanchions.

It may be worth considering installing the gates that are also combined with boarding ladders, however, they may not allow boarding from a pontoon as they pivot over the toe rail.

 

[Ariadne]

Have a good think about it first!

We have guardrail gates (our guard rails are 86cm high) and have now closed them off permanently. We have kept the bottom two wires removable (just in case) but the top wire we couldn't tension enough to feel safe while sailing. To be able to open and close ( at least for SWMBO and kids) the gates you need to have quite a bit of slack to do up & undo the clips.

Yes they do work and are very handy if have an alongside berth, but we feel they imposed on function of keeping on you the boat, by having the slack and not getting the tension we like on the wire while sailing. In the end we resorted to clipping them up and then tightening the bottle screws to 'bar' tight to get the tension we wanted, then having to undo it again when we wanted to use them.

At anchor they were a pain and toooften you'd grab for non existing wire walking up the deck only miss the dingy alongside and fall in! Not too bad in the Med' but I would think bloody cold in the UK.