As you may remember my F22 had been left sitting on its cradles, which in turn were sitting on top of the strongback which I had yet to disassemble. My initial plan was to simply man-handle the hull off the cradles, then lift-slide it forward until we reached the truck ramp. One of my neighbors had a better idea: use some dollies to maneuver the boat on. We switched to this method shortly after getting the boat completely off the cradle and it worked great: we were able to dolly the boat completely into the truck, then lift it back up to get the cradles back underneath. During unloading, we left the cradles in place and dollied the boat down like that.
Okay here's some pictures; squeezing the hull through the hole where the fence was:
The view from the other side (bow is sitting on a baby mattress which is on top of a dolly):
Then we added the second dolly under the aft end, and simply pushed the boat along the board "runway" we had laid down:
Starting to head up the ramp:
The dolly wheels bumped pretty easily over the ramp-truck bed join, and it wasn't long before we had the hull in the truck. We put the cradles back under the boat and strapped it down tight:
Note, I have submitted a trademark application for "Tri in a Truck" - if you wish to use it, email to arrange royalty payments :).
The rental truck was a Nissan diesel box van; the box was 26' long, so plenty of room length-wise for the hull, but it was pretty tight width-wise:
Driving such a behemoth of a truck was quite the adventure though, I must say. Really gotta watch the corners!
Unloading at the new house:
Unloading was a breeze with so many hands! I really cannot thank my neighbors enough for being willing to give me a few hours of their Sunday morning; thank you Bill, Sean, Scott, and Jim!
After the main hull had been moved, my son helped me move the floats. No dollies for these, we just carried them right up the ramp. Here they are all strapped in:
I also got a good start on disassembling the boat tent; the main cover and the end covers were taken off and taken to the new house. Here I'm removing the pipe clamps that hold the end panels on (yep, I'm sporting my winter beard again too):
Last picture for now: spreading the main boat tent cover on the ground so we can carefully fold it up:
The area next to the garage where I was going to set up the boat tent proved to be too marshy according to the grading contractor, so he is coming back out this week to re-grade the area (and provide a new drain path for surface water), then gravel it. I should end up with a really nice "pad" to work on. In the meantime, the floats and hull have been left on the driveway under a large piece of black plastic. We're obviously swamped with all of this moving stuff, but I hope to get started on some boat stuff again in the next couple of months.
