Trailers with trolleys

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Hello all,
I want to build a trailer with a trolley for my 26 foot Ross780.
Here in Aus. this setup seems to be unknown. Can anybody help with photo's,drawings etc. of this type of trailer. I like the idea of not drowning the trailer and being able to take the trolly off and useing the trailer for something else.
Thanks,
Peter.
 
Hi Peter, this type of trailer is surely more suitable for dinghy's and similar light vessels. I have one myself & will try to post a photo tomorrow to show you the general idea before I plonk a boat on it failing which I'll try to post a detailed drawing.

Not knowing anything about a Ross 780 I would not like to be dogmatic but I'd think only Samson would want to drag a load like that up the mildest of slopes. My Bosun dinghy takes all the effort I like to put in.
 
The type of trolley I am thinking of is a 4 wheel arrangement (maybe I am using the wrong terminology) to move the boat from the water to the trailer. I have seen photo's of this with small yachts but the photographer was concentrating on the boat so not a lot of detail in the trailer department.
 
Trailer Trol;ley

I am familiar with the Ross 780 and it is a lot of boat on a trailer.
I grant that trailer maintenance for my boat is a significant concern. After 25 years the aft end of the trailer had to be replaced due rust. The brakes suffered terribly from salt water and the bearings need a lot of grease.
However a trolley would need reasonably big wheels.(in case of sand or mud on the ramp) These would have to hang outside the road trailer. With a width limit of 2.5 metres the trolley wheells would have to nest behind the road wheels.You need max track on the road trailer for stability. This means you need a 2 wheel trolley with cof G of the boat near above the trolley wheels for manouvreability. That leaves you with boat cof g way to far back on the road trailer. You need about 10% total weight on the draw bar.
Only alternative might be to fix trolley wheels well aft and have a temporary robust nose wheel for the trolley to be fitted as the trolley comes off the trailer.

The chassis of the trolley would have to be winched on to the road trailer presumably with rollers or small wheels to allow for the trolley to slide onto the road trailer and you would need a ramp of some sort to get the trolley up off the ground onto the trailer.

Just thinking about it I think the Cof G will be the show stopper but all in all far too much trouble and extra weight compared to dunking the trailer as I do. olewill
 
This has just been asked somewhere on here by ErikBenson and photos where posted with replies. He already has a car trailer that takes 2 tonnes and needs a trolley for his 16ft classic motor boat which has a (debatable) 1.5 ton wt.
Iain Oughtred includes plans for such a system with his Euan Mara design; The first builder made it up and sent back the system for other builders to use.
It uses 8 Wheelbarrow sized wheels, 2 at each corner, with plain plastic bearings. These give it slight possitive bouancy so it is easy to push it under the boat on the slip. The wt of the E-M is only around 1,000 kg though. Yours sounds a bit more.
I will make something on the same lines for my 21ft/1,500kg boat when it is a bit closer to being finished. Car trailers are commoner than boat trailers here second hand (and not so rusty) Plus, as you say, can be usefull for other things.
A

The wheel barrow wheels size at 16" allows them to be under the boat in the car track width, I have seen some of the same size, but much tougher than your average wb, so OK for the wt. Overloading small wheels a bit is not a problem for the use here, it is on the highway that heat buildup would cause blowouts.And you could use blocks etc to take the wt once loaded on the big trailer-A
 
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Dehler 25

Try googling Dehler 25
They make a very neat road trailer with launching trolley
You could adapt the idea for your boat
 
Thanks for that LS, prob here is it is very difficult to import Brit trailers (homologation) and illegal to self build over 500kg load. Hence my direction.
A
 
William_H said:
The chassis of the trolley would have to be winched on to the road trailer presumably with rollers or small wheels to allow for the trolley to slide onto the road trailer and you would need a ramp of some sort to get the trolley up off the ground onto the trailer.

Just thinking about it I think the Cof G will be the show stopper but all in all far too much trouble and extra weight compared to dunking the trailer as I do. olewill
Click to expand...

I'm with William on this. The problem I see is the stern of the boat hitting the ground as you back it off the trailer. This is how Finns and a lot of other dinghies are transported and then rigged before sailing. The Ross 780 is a lot of boat and sits low on a trailer normally with a lot of overhang on the stern. Imagine this boat sitting on a trolly on a car trailer and carefully calculate the angles required to get it off. Best bet would be to optimise your present trailer. Plenty of great stuff about to rebuild your present set up.
 
No wonder that trailer trolley combinations are rare in AUS.. Years ago there was a Ross 780 that had been stretched to 9 Mts. that had this setup. It was featured in a couple of magazines at the time as it was ahead of its time. It is possible and practical.
Thanks for the Dehler link, very interesting, Ross may be a bit heavier at 1038Kgs..
Peter
 
Trolleys

Thanks for the link to the Dehlya. The trolley looks very appropriate for that boat in that it has the stub keel which demands the boat sit higher on the trailer with room for the wheels of the trolley underneath.
I am pretty sure the Ross and certainly my boat have no stub keel but a flush hull which means the hull sits low on the trailer and there would be no room for trolley wheels inside the main wheels without raising the hull a lot. So for the sake of low cofG and easier access to the boat on the trailer I think no trolley is best. In comparison to the Dehlya my gunwhales are 152 cms from the ground and the bottom of the hull 50cms from the ground when on road trailer. I can climb on from the mudguard. I reckona Dehlya type trolley on mi9ne would raise the hull another 50cms at least. olewill
 
We had our 25ft 2 ton lift keel sail boat on a dolly and Trailer system similar to the RM one above which works well however, it does need a fairly shallow gradient concrete slip ways to work well. We did use it to recover on sand one year but it was difficult with the need to use planks etc. and a decent trolley jack. Launching on to sand was not an issue and we did this several times simply pulling the trailer out from underneath the dolly, however you need the rising tide to float the boat off. Unfortunately the trailer was stolen several years ago and a normal fin keel trailer was a lot cheaper to buy, which we now crane on to.
 
I have not had the need to launch on sand. The ramp I use is a shallow gradient concrete ramp. The ramp is one of the many reasons I want a trailer/trolley. To get enough water to launch the boat the vehicle has to just about swim, not good. Some Hunter Medinas look to have a good setup, anyone have photo's of their trailer.
Peter
 
Launching TS

One trick that may help you with a normal trailer is that on my trailer I had to replace the draw bar. I refitted with a few more degrees of angle down. This means that the boat( Castle 650) rides slightly stern low. It also means that the boat will roll off the trailer with less ramp slope required or less pushing. You could get a similar effect with a higher tow hook, jacking up the rear of the car, moving the trailer hitch lower or simply raising the draw bar temporarily with the jockey wheel.
So if you can get the boat to roll off all you need then is enough water behind the trailer so the stern does not hit the bottom. With the lowest slung boat on trailer I can launch with the water barely up to the axle on a steep ramp. Recovery takes a little more water to get the bow to float over the rear rollers before winching on. i think with the trailer disconnected and the draw bar jacked up high enough I could fairly easily slide the boat off onto the dry sand. Not so easy to recover though.
good luck olewill
 
While its nice to be able to keep your brakes out of the water the object is to launch this large trailer sailor easily as possible. Another consideration is the inconvenience a trailer trolley combination is going to be to fellow users. Where is this switch over going to occur? Parking and launching space is at a premium already in most places. Even an extendable tow bar is going to slow the whole process and inconvenience other users. At my club which race trailer sailers including a Ross 780 and Sonata 7's, they rig in the car park then all launch from the same ramp in a surprisingly civilised way. If you rocked up with a trailer/ trolley combo there would be pandimonium. In most parks this would require about 70 or 80 feet of space. The trolley would need steerable wheels and possibly brakes and lots of manouvreing about with a tow vehicle. Then you would have to park it all, presumably after you put the trolley back on the trailer. I reckon by this time you would have lost interest in sailing. Forget the Delya concept, you have a fat trailer sailer that sits low on rollers. Trolley wheels have to be wider than your hull then the road wheels are outside this. Your trailer will already be at max towing width. Do a scale drawing using the minimum size trolley wheels you can get away with and it will be obvious why its impractical. And I still reckon the stern will hit the concrete when you lower the trolly off the trailer.
 
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