DaySailer.org Forum

How does anyone get their boat weighed? I've thought about going to a truck scale with the boat on the trailer and then launching the boat and taking just the trailer back to the truck scale.

That was my plan until I couldn't find any nearby scales...

It might be worth checking with the truck scale to see how closely they measure before you pay for it. I say this because when we had our camping trailer weighed some years ago, they rounded to the nearest 100 pounds. That won't help if you're trying to qualify your boat for DaySailer class racing, where the limit (class measurer, please correct me if I'm wrong) is 575 pounds.

A couple of bathroom scales should allow you to get some decent measurements. The total weight is less than double the maximum weight range of such scales, so the trick is to set things up so that each scale doesn't get the full weight.

I can think of a number of schemes.

Here's one: Support the transom on one scale, with a few shims so the boat stays upright. Place a 2x4 underneath the front 3rd of the boat (across). Mark the center and place the "keel" on the mark. Support one end of the 2x4 on a fixed point and the other end on the scale.

The total weight should be double the reading of the second scale plus the reading from the first scale.

If you can move the scale without disturbing the positioning of the arrangement, you should be able to use a single scale by doing the measurements in sequence in the two locations.

Just don't use the brand of digital scale we had in our house. After wowing everybody with it's apparent precision, it suddenly lost its brain and started first to read low, then to drift, and finally it amused itself by alternating random readings....nothing helped, so we finally gave it away to a good recycling program.