Hauling a boat out of the water

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine who owns a classic wood cruising power boat needed to run his boat from its permanent moorage in his home marina over to a “boat yard” where it would be lifted out of the water, put on blocks, and receive regular maintenance … maintenance that can’t be done with the boat in the water.  This friend of mine called me and asked if I could go along and handle fenders and dock lines for him while he drove the boat.  I said “heck yes, when do I show up?”

Who would refuse a free boat ride, I ask you!?

Lots of you folks who read this blog already know all about “hauling” a boat (the term we use to describe lifting it out of the water).  But many folks here don’t know about those sorts of things so I thought I’d write a little blog post about it and share some photos of one of the times that I hauled my classic wood boat (when I owned her).

One thing to know is that, here in the Pacific Northwest, we leave our boats in the water all year ’round because the water doesn’t freeze here … it never gets cold enough for long enough.  So we “haul” our boats out of the water only for maintenance/repair that we can’t do with the boat in the water.  Some folks haul once every 5 years; some folks haul every two years; some only when they think they need to; lots of us wood boaters haul every year because we really really really don’t want any problems with our fine old classic vessels.  My boat still had its original engines (and it still does today) and lots of other original stuff from 1939, so I always took extra special care of that boat and hauled her almost every year.

Because I had the boat hauled that often, you’d think that I would be used to doing that, but no indeed, it was not a fun thing to do.  The cost was significant, but that wasn’t the truly stressful thing.  What always made my heart leap into my throat was … seeing the boat hanging there up in mid air  while she was being taken out of the water … no no no!  She belongs in the water!

Basically, here’s the drill …….

I run the boat from my marina to the haul-out yard where the work will be done.  I park the boat at a dock right next to the haul-out facility while the yard folks prep for the haul-out.

Pied Piper temporarily moored at a dock near the “yard” in Seattle, waiting to be hauled.

Photo above … the tall blue metal contraption with large black tires is a “Travelift” and will lift my boat out of the water.  You can see Pied Piper waaaaay in the distance at the dock where she’s waiting.  You can also see the yellow straps attached to the Travelift that are already deep down in the water, ready to lift the boat.

As soon as the haul-out crew says it’s time for my boat, I walk back out to my boat and start the engines and “drive” her over to the Travelift, and drive her right in over the yellow straps (the straps are plenty deep so they don’t interfere with the boat’s propellers or rudders).  When the fellow running the Travelift tells me to stop, I stop the boat using forward and reverse gears to keep her steady.

He then positions the boat very carefully and VERY precisely on the straps by moving the boat with the straps.  The orange box that he has strapped to him has toggles that move the straps up and down, side to side, and move the entire big blue Travelift forward and back … even an inch at a time if that fellow so wants.

In fact, before I took the photos below, the fellow had already used the machinery to bring the bow of my boat right up to those wooden beams (about 9 inches away from them!) and then he turned the boat to the left a bit, so that I could simply step off the foredeck of the boat (in mid air!) and climb a short ladder up onto land.  That’s how I got on land in order to take these photos.

And then the boat gets repositioned and centered perfectly … and then it is lifted out of the water and further up into the air.  Keep in mind that my boat weighs about 26,000 pounds or 13 tons!

THIS is what is so stressful.  The Travelift is safe … it has four straps, each strap has four large metal cables supporting it, there are all manner of safety devices in play, the boat is held so perfectly that there is no snapping or cracking or moaning of the boat’s hull planks … but it just isn’t right!

And the higher she gets, the more stressed I get.  She is not a bird, she is not a plane, she is a boat and she just doesn’t belong up there in the air!

As soon as the boat is high enough to clear those wooden beams, then the fellow uses the toggles on the orange box that’s strapped to him to run the gas engine on that Travelift and make it move forward.  He’s a pro at this and runs the Travelift ever so slowly forward with the boat cradled in those straps.

With the engines in the center of the boat (fore-aft) and the fuel tanks and water tanks in the aft part of the boat, he had already positioned the boat on the straps so the bow is a bit lower, so the weight is more evenly distributed on all four straps.

He stops the boat (still in the air) over a particular area of the concrete, and he shuts off the gasoline engine that powers the Travelift.

With the motion of the Travelift, the boat sways a bit fore and aft, and side to side.  But even with that swaying motion, the boat doesn’t make one bit of noise in complaint.  Sometimes we wood boat owners try to fool ourselves and say that our boats LIKE being hauled out of the water because they are getting a spa treatment, getting cleaned up and tidied up, getting a massage, getting all the shiny parts under the water shiny again.  SOME people say that … I’m just not too sure I believe it.

While she’s swaying there (not swaying much, just a little), two fellows clean the bottom of the boat with a pressure washer (on low setting for the wood hull) and with a soft-bristled brush. You can see how clean that side of the boat is that they are working on above … and how black the other side still is with marine growth that they haven’t cleaned yet.

 

With most of the “crud” cleaned off the hull and the running gear and all other underwater parts, the fellow starts up the gasoline engine on the Travelift again and “drives” the boat over to the location in the yard where the boat will be blocked for a few days for more work.

The three videos below show the Travelift moving the boat to its temporary spot in the yard. My apologies for the poor quality of the videos. I used my cell phone instead of my real camera … next time, I’ll know better.

 

 

 

Above, the boat is parked and blocked, with a ladder tied on for ingress/egress.

Lots of work was done on my boat during this five-day haul-out, most of it by me. But I hired a shipwright to repair a bit of damage on one side near the back of the boat that had been caused by my home marina’s dock coming apart during a storm a month or so before this haul-out.

Before.

After.

While that work was being done, I cleaned barnacles off the props and running gear, installed new zincs on the rudders ….

…. polished both prop shafts and changed those zincs, painted the bottom of the hull with red anti-fouling paint ….

…. cleaned up the four “ladies” that hold up the stern swimplatform, cleaned the engine exhausts and other metal thru-hulls ….

…. re-drilled holes for the screws that hold the cut-water on, completed a bit of repair to the wood immediately behind the cut-water (the vertical metal piece that cuts through the water), repainted the black boot stripe, polished every inch of both sides of the white hull topsides ….

…. and finally all of us were done with all of our work. The boat was then lifted off those wooden blocks by the Travelift and taken in reverse order back to the water and then “splashed” back into the water. I don’t know why we use that term “splashed”; it sounds so rough and messy and dangerous. The process is actually very gentle. In fact, the process of lowering the boat back into the water is so gentle and slow, that I swear I can hear the Pied Piper sigh with relief when her wooden hull finally touches that water again.  Ahhh, home at last.

Then I pay the yardmaster anything that I still owe them.  I run the boat back over to that same dock right near the haul-out and tie the boat to that dock.  I check inside the boat to make sure everything is A-OK … the bilge pumps still work, the exhaust coolant is still getting water from the outside sea-water, nothing is leaking that shouldn’t be, etc.

And then I just sit and have a snack and wait for 30 minutes or so while the boat is still tied to that dock, and then I check everything again.  If there are any problems at all, I want to be right near the haul-out yard in case I need help.  I’ve never needed help, but better safe than drowned!

Once everything has checked out, I start the engines again, turn on the VHF radio and the radar, check the gauges on the dash, check that the waterway around me is clear so I can leave, then untie the dock lines, bring in the fenders, and I’m on my way home … headed back south to Tacoma from the Seattle haul-out yard.  Another successful “haul” complete.

I sold this boat in 2018, after owning her and cruising every square inch of Puget Sound and the Canadian Gulf Island (and a bit further north too) for 18 years.  I spent a LOT of time on this boat, and a lot of time working on the boat, keeping her pristine, keeping her as perfect as I could.  Sometimes I miss that boat … cruising in Puget Sound and Canada was extraordinarily wonderful.  She was built in 1939 by the Matthews Boat Company in Ohio and she still has her original engines in her … they run like Swiss watches, oh they just hum.  But I’m finding that I feel the same way about RVing and the extraordinary things I see on land.  I still love the water, don’t get me wrong.  And I sure do love to watch videos like the one below that I took from inside the boat on the way home after this haul-out.

The video above was taken on a most particularly beautiful calm day on the water. If you’d like to see a few more videos of the boat on the water, check out my YouTube channel here … https://www.youtube.com/user/annhaypnw/videos … click on “videos” under the big P in the tan circle … then click on “oldest”under the word “shorts” and you’ll see the videos I’ve posted there about this boat. I have many thousands of photos of this boat and a few dozen videos. She’ll be in my heart forever. “Pied Piper” was her original name in 1939 … every owner since has kept that name … may she keep her name always.

The Pied Piper‘s new owner loves this boat too and has been cruising and enjoying the boat just like I did, and he has been maintaining the boat in perfect condition as well. I wish him well, always … and I wish Pied Piper the very best!