You gotta love friends with forklifts. Thank you Mark at the Airless Repair Center next door! He lifted two boat hulls for us today. Spotters were Charlie and Dean forward, with Colin and Griffin managing the sterns. Mrs. Carter the Co-owner did a great job with the camera. Here goes:

The smartest thing we did today was decide before lifting that the forklift would be stationary. No nudging the lifted boat and causing any sway; the truck and trailer had to line up under the boat. That was easy with such a long wheelbase.
Hours of good prep placing the posts on the trailer and figuring out Rick’s lifting straps led to only a couple of minutes needed for each lift. Watch the first one here:

http://youtube/8BEpEYju_gk

After the video we pulled the truck forward, moved the second hull to the cement pad and the forklift to the other side. All good.

Notice that first the floats were truck-strapped to their trollies. Then the lifting straps went around the hulls only, and upon lifting the hulls brought their strapped trollies with them. Lifting straps around only the hulls created a much safer pull with no wracking stresses on the wood trollies.

And we’re down. The four truck straps then got moved to travel around the trailer frame, and more strapping to tie the two floats together against any side to side forces.

No drama today, but kind of stressful for the boat builder :). It was a big relief to take this shot before heading to dinner:

It’s going to be a big boat all put together.

And being an opportunist, I finagled the big crew for 20 more minutes to get the mast down from the rafters to ground level. For those of you who’ve been to the shop, you know what a shoehorn that was! Yes, the rotator pin just fits inside the small entry door with the masthead jammed in to the far diagonal corner. Phew. Mast modifications start in the morning. Stay tuned.