P'd off with Princess.

As a contrast, here's a boat that was specced without a factory passerelle - note the transom handrail, iirc you only got this if you *didn't* order passerelle preparation (fast forward to 0'40):

 
jimmy_the_builder said:
As a contrast, here's a boat that was specced without a factory passerelle - note the transom handrail, iirc you only got this if you *didn't* order passerelle preparation (fast forward to 0'40):

Click to expand...

Thanks Jimmy,

You're absolutely right. You could either get the passerelle, the concealed lifting crane or I presume neither.

I have just received photos from a P50 with the lifting crane installed and I can report that there appears to be no additional reinforcement underneath the mounting 'bucket' inside the transom. Just a steel plate that the crane sits on and 4 bolts through the fibreglass. No obvious additional structural elements over and above what I have in there.. All loads appear to be taken by the transom moulding.

Interesting..

Cheers. James.
 
Hi All,

I heard back from the French brokers in La Nap overnight. This is what they said:-

"I have looked in the archives and it would seem that the passerelle was fitted upon arrival in France, not at the Princess shipyard in the UK.
If it was fitted here, I would assume it was done by the company Euromed in Cannes that are the official Opacmare agent in our area.
This is all I can gather from our archives i’m afraid."

Nothing really definitive; so I guess all that remains is to get a look at Henryf's installation to make some comparisons as to whether there was any reinforcement over and above what I have..

Cheers,

James.
 
J12345T said:
Hi All,

I heard back from the French brokers in La Nap overnight. This is what they said:-

"I have looked in the archives and it would seem that the passerelle was fitted upon arrival in France, not at the Princess shipyard in the UK.
If it was fitted here, I would assume it was done by the company Euromed in Cannes that are the official Opacmare agent in our area.
This is all I can gather from our archives i’m afraid."

Nothing really definitive; so I guess all that remains is to get a look at Henryf's installation to make some comparisons as to whether there was any reinforcement over and above what I have..

Cheers,

James.
Click to expand...

Why not call the factory to see if they will tell you how it was specified at build?
 
J12345T said:
Hi All,

I heard back from the French brokers in La Nap overnight. This is what they said:-

"I have looked in the archives and it would seem that the passerelle was fitted upon arrival in France, not at the Princess shipyard in the UK.
If it was fitted here, I would assume it was done by the company Euromed in Cannes that are the official Opacmare agent in our area.
This is all I can gather from our archives i’m afraid."

Nothing really definitive; so I guess all that remains is to get a look at Henryf's installation to make some comparisons as to whether there was any reinforcement over and above what I have..

Cheers,

James.
Click to expand...
See post #73 ...exactly as I how figured ...hence the blank crane lift part of the sticker because the installer could not be sure , or was not prepared on site to put a figure in the box .
 
Portofino said:
See post #73 ...exactly as I how figured ...hence the blank crane lift part of the sticker because the installer could not be sure , or was not prepared on site to put a figure in the box .
Click to expand...

You may well be exactly right. All that remains to be seen is how a factory install like (I presume) Henryf's P50 is reinforced. Hopefully something I can work from to find a solution. Cheers.
 
J12345T said:
You may well be exactly right. All that remains to be seen is how a factory install like (I presume) Henryf's P50 is reinforced. Hopefully something I can work from to find a solution. Cheers.
Click to expand...
Yes we need a comparison pic of H ,s boat .

Little bit more detective work ...compared boat handbooks !

You have said yours indeed mentions not to use the pass as a crane .Princesses cop out .
Are the pages in a ring binder with numbers in sequence ?
Just wondering if the book is one size generic thing with stuff like “ if applicable “ ...Aircon , passerelle, ice makers etc etc or has each book been tailor made depending on build .

Henry’s boat if it’s been factory reinforced ( or what ever ? ) to accept a passerelle......in which case his handbook should mention tender max Kg ,s and lift capacity and the lift box on the pass sticker should have a number ......ideally the same number in the hand book ?
 
J12345T said:
You may well be exactly right. All that remains to be seen is how a factory install like (I presume) Henryf's P50 is reinforced. Hopefully something I can work from to find a solution. Cheers.
Click to expand...

To be honest I do not know why you need them. A good grp guy who does these installations will understand what you need to do.
You might here different opinions and different ideas, depends to how many you talk too.
The best is always wood reinforcement, cause metal is rigid and always cracks the gelcoat over time. Aluminium is better to steel, but I would go to wood all the time.
I have lifted up my Opacmare to allow for better tender management (original Gobbi is minus one foot above bathing platform to make it easy access) and reinforced with wood and fiberglass, and ten years down the line have not even one hairline crack. I have lifted up to 80 kg ribs with the passarelle.

Honestly I am surprised that the area of the passarelle considering the age of the boat, is not standard reinforced by Princess on all models. For them that way is always less a headache if someone ticks the passarelle option.
Tender stowage on bathing platforms with passarelles being used as a crane to lift up and down is very much standard procedure onward from 2000 all over minus for Sportfish boat. Princess had the 58 renamed to 60, and 53 to the 56 in 1995 all added with an extended bathing platform to stow a tender, just as an example. The note of the manual makes also everything sound puzzled and distinctively protective from a boat builder, which does not build weak boats.
Yes they are not over build as some here think, but a Princess in my experience is never under-build. I like to call it balanced engineering. So it all seems a puzzle.
 
Last edited:
I've read this thread - 90+ posts - and I'm puzzled. There's an issue inasmuch as the pass. didn't work as expected and damage has been caused to the platform. OTOH we know that the hydraulic ram is up to the task. So, all that is needed is to get the load calculations done and have the platform rebuilt with appropriate reinforcement.

It seems to me to be a waste of time (literally) to speculate on what the builder did or didn't do or specify or, indeed, what an aftermarket fitter may or may not have done 10 years ago because the chances of redress are vanishingly slim and one thing that this thread does show is that it would be really very difficult to prove who did what and on what basis back in the day.

Unbuckle the $10k (or whatever) to get the work done and enjoy the boat with its new and functional crane, would be my advice. But feel free to ignore. ATB.
 
Right then.....

Sorry for the delay in responding. Only just popped down the boat and I had to remove the back walls of the crew cabin to access the necessary areas.

I think there is some additional reinforcement and webs on a factory install.

The back of the “hinge” where the walking part of the pass meets the boat.



The lower leg where it meets the boat. Mounted to vertical transom wall and bathing platform



The underside of the bathing platform



The area where the lower leg meets the vertical transom wall. Note there are large webs either side of the pass as well as the smaller webs where the hinge part of the pass meets the top of the transom wall



The net result is a plate rating of 320kg.



I’m sorry if the photos don’t show stuff very well. Taken on my phone in a bit of a rush. Just popped down to move the boat back onto our newly dredged berth.

Henry

Edited to say the owners handbook just provides some basic tips. Wash it down every time you go out on the boat....
 
Last edited:
Thanks Henryf and everyone else who has replied to the thread.

Comparison between Henryf's installation and mine:-

-I don't have a crew cabin so slightly less structure in that area
-I have the exact same aluminium bracket holding the hinge part of the passerelle.
-I have exactly the same fibreglass shear webs extending down the transom.
-My ram foot mount does not extend up the transom on the outside.
-I have what looks like reinforcement under the ram foot but maybe not to the same extent as Henryf's.
-Having just replaced the teak with marine deck which is a cork mat type of product as opposed to teak planks maybe there is a little less structural strength?

Apart from that the installations appear to be very similar..

Fellow forum-ite Jimmy the Builder very kindly offered to contact Princess UK on my behalf. Huge thanks to Jimmy for this.

Although I had had a reply from the Australian Princess service manager the information that Jimmy provided was new to me. His contact Pete Harwood stated that (as many here had suggested) that because the passerelle was not fitted at the factory the additional reinforcement to lift a tender was not fitted.

Two things; firstly I'll have to take him at his word that the reinforcement on my boat is not functionally similar to Henryf's. It looks similar but clearly it is not. Secondly, it would appear that there are different specifications available from the factory in this regard. This is not what I was told.

In fairness to Princess it doesn't seem to be their issue however, in my defence I would have to say that if I had been told this on my initial enquiries and been given some assistance as to how to solve the issue maybe I would have been a little less p'd off... Anyhoo..

From what I can see of Henryf's install I think I'll instruct my engineers to first re glass and level the underside of the swim platform in the area under the ram foot and then construct an aluminium bracket tying the top aluminium mount to the underside of the swim platform. I'll let you all know how I get on..

Many thanks again.

James.
 
benjenbav said:
I've read this thread - 90+ posts - and I'm puzzled. There's an issue inasmuch as the pass. didn't work as expected and damage has been caused to the platform. OTOH we know that the hydraulic ram is up to the task. So, all that is needed is to get the load calculations done and have the platform rebuilt with appropriate reinforcement.

It seems to me to be a waste of time (literally) to speculate on what the builder did or didn't do or specify or, indeed, what an aftermarket fitter may or may not have done 10 years ago because the chances of redress are vanishingly slim and one thing that this thread does show is that it would be really very difficult to prove who did what and on what basis back in the day.

Unbuckle the $10k (or whatever) to get the work done and enjoy the boat with its new and functional crane, would be my advice. But feel free to ignore. ATB.
Click to expand...

waste of time... but you "read this thread -90+ posts" (!!!), ...maybe not so uninteresting...
 
J12345T said:
From what I can see of Henryf's install I think I'll instruct my engineers to first re glass and level the underside of the swim platform in the area under the ram foot and then construct an aluminium bracket tying the top aluminium mount to the underside of the swim platform.
Click to expand...
Good idea, but I would also ask Princess if the external ram foot mount that henryf has on his boat is available as a spare part, and if not I'd try to have one built by a fabricator - maybe also a bit larger than the original one.
This way, the transom becomes concurrent in supporting the load, rather than have it 100% vertically charged on the swim platform surface.

In fact, as I envisaged in first para of my post #78, I am not surprised to read now that this difference between your and henryf's boat is confirmed.
Imho, the load distribution with the mount fixed also to the transom can change a lot, also due to the geometry/angles at which the cylinder works.
 
Orthop said:
waste of time... but you "read this thread -90+ posts" (!!!), ...maybe not so uninteresting...
Click to expand...
Interesting: for sure. Just gently trying to suggest to the OP that, imho, he would be better getting a fix in rather than speculating on who did what to whom in the ancient past.
 
benjenbav said:
Interesting: for sure. Just gently trying to suggest to the OP that, imho, he would be better getting a fix in rather than speculating on who did what to whom in the ancient past.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your input Benjenbav,

You need to appreciate that in order to achieve a suitable fix I needed to investigate the problem and to find out how others with similar boats had solved it. In posting here I have achieved exactly that through the knowledge and kindness of fellow boat owners.

So thanks for your suggestion however, I'm afraid this was all part of the process.

Cheers.

James.
 
James, the one thing that has bothered me throughout this thread is why it only happened now after 10 years. Was this the first time the passarel was used as a crane for your tender or any other tender of comparable weight?
I cant help but think that given the time lapse that there is a additional factor that has caused the failure. Somebody mentioned that if the passarel was too low to the dock and there was a passing wake there may have been some structural weakening..... ? Whatever the reason for it to survive 10 years and to now suddenly fail points to a contributing element. Or have I misunderstood something along the way?
 
BruceK said:
James, the one thing that has bothered me throughout this thread is why it only happened now after 10 years. Was this the first time the passarel was used as a crane for your tender or any other tender of comparable weight?
I cant help but think that given the time lapse that there is a additional factor that has caused the failure. Somebody mentioned that if the passarel was too low to the dock and there was a passing wake there may have been some structural weakening..... ? Whatever the reason for it to survive 10 years and to now suddenly fail points to a contributing element. Or have I misunderstood something along the way?
Click to expand...

I think the answer to your question is that he has only just had synthetic teak installed.
Well, I think he said Marine Deck - I think that is the "cork style" decking like the Marine Deck 2000 that I have on my Novurania dinghy.
Two years ago, I replaced our wood teak on our bathing platform with Flexiteek
The big bathing platform hatch was always very flimsy before our change to synthetic teak.
But after installing the synthetic teak, it was far too flexible so I had to remove it, strengthen the hatch and re-install.
All fixed now but it shows that the wood teak "adds to" the strength.
In my case, the hatch was always flexing but more so with the synthetic teak.
In James' case, he opted for an even more flexible cork based teak style than the Flexiteek that I installed.
I think this is why his passerelle issue has only just come to light.
 
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