Wayne or anyone else,
I would love to see a photo of your winter storage cradle or any other set-up for indoor storage off the trailer. I have access to $0 barn space for winter storage without trailer (for reasons of both height and length). I have read this thread and seen Roger L's caution (about outdoor ground storage) in the thread Winter Storage:
rnlivingston » Sun Jun 25, 2006 8:28 am wrote:It is important to properly support a Day Sailer on dry land. If not supported properly, you can distort the shape of the hull and develop soft spots.
GreenLake's descriptions and photo of his trailer are very helpful in terms of where support is needed and how much.
I will be looking at the barn space this weekend and, given that I've decided to keep my boat out (hauled last Saturday b/c of tropical storm Henri which landed six miles east on the RI shore), I now have ample warm weather time to build a storage support system and attend to my broken jib track, too. (Once in the barn, my boat will lie in a tight space under other stuff stored on cross supports above, so no work on it until spring.)
The support system needs to be as close to the ground as possible. The trailer can back right up to the space. I envision sliding the boat off the trailer onto a (slicked up) carpeted board under the length of the keelson, and then pushing it the rest of the way. Jim H's trailer bunk do-over photo above has me thinking it might be easier to get the boat on and off a support system like that as opposed to GL's suggestion to build a series of v-shaped supports. Does such a three-board system as on Jim's trailer seem feasible for winter storage? Either way, I would adopt GL's suggestion to make bunks 8–12" wide and extend them to the end of the transom.
Two great trailer bunk threads are, I think, relevant to this thread and GL has posted his great trailer pic on both with slightly different info/suggestions in each.
Subject: Bunk Settings/AdjustmentsSubject: Trailer Bunk spacing and fittingIn a search of the gallery I found this
cradle, but it was built to work on the boat, not for storage, so I assume insufficient.
It's sad to hang up the season so early, but in the five weeks my boat was on the mooring, I had some great sails with fifteen different people (aged 6–76) as crew. And storing it off the trailer gives me a good opportunity to change rollers and widen the bunks on my trailer while the weather is still nice (and I'm not out sailing). Funny, just a few days before Henri, I signed up to crew at the 72nd Annual Regatta on Lake Massapoag (Sharon, MA) in September, just 20 miles from home.
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