Boat Storage for a Sr. Citizen

I have a friend who keeps his Riverhawk [square stern wide canoe like boat] at a lake in NC. He has kept it stored under a wood deck there. The problems is his physical abilities have deminished wit age and he now struggles to get it stowed and out. In my mind he needs a couple of astroturf covered runners, maybe with rollers and a winch to pull it into place. If power is available, which I doubt, a motor and track for a garage door could be redneck engineered to do the work.

Have any of you seen, built, designed anything like this or do you have any useful ideas.

Thanks, UJ

UJ,

Good thought on the garage door opener but everyone I've ever fooled with has a resistance sensor on it for safety. IF it were [pulling a canoe up under a porch, it would have to slide very easily or the opener would shut off. Also, it would have to be kept out of the weather which may be difficult under a porch.

One thought might be a 12v DC winch used on trucks and 4WD vehicles in the woods. They are weather proof. The down side there is getting 12v DC to it and they can get to be a little expensive unless you can pick up a used one somewhere.

If the winch could be kept out of the weather, Harbor Freight sells a couple of nice winches for just over $100. You can get them on sale regularly for less. They would work great. They work both in and out so getting the canoe out would not be a real problem.

Building 2 runners and covering them with trailer bunker carpet would be easy and inexpensive. You can also get a teflon material to put on top of the runners that will let the canoe slide real easy.

Good luck with it and let us know what happens.

Adrian

Not being able to see where and how he stores is canoe, it is hard for me to make a suggestion, but, I can tell you what I have seen here on one lake that I thought was pretty clever. The guy's home was up a bank a good ways and he had railroad rails leading from his boat storage garage down and into the lake. He took the tires off his boat trailer and had the railroad rails positioned the same width as the trailer wheels. He had an electic winch located inside his boat garage and had it hooked to the boat trailer. When he wanted to use his boat to fish, he would engage the electric winch and it would allow the boat trailer to go down the railroad rails into the lake where he would unhook the boat and go fishing. When he returned, he would run the boat up on the trailer, hook it to the trailer and go up to his home and then he would turn on the electirc winch which would haul his boat and trailer up the rails and into his boat house. With the tires off the rims and the rims on the rails, his boat and trailer would track up and down the rail and never came off. I thought this was just pretty darn clever....

If it is a deck away from the water WarrenP's idea is great, if it is a dock I would try just using an old boat trailer. It has everything needed, rollers, winch, tie down points, etc... just remove the tires and let it sit on the ground.

I think this will require a road trip to the NC mountains once it warms up a little. I am thinking Warren' s idea combined with a single axle boat mover I made last year may result in a 4 wheeled dolly that can be pulled/pushed into and out of storage.