Some trailer progress

First off, some OSB sheets made it possible to get the boat out of the tent and lifted with the new hoist frame:

I definitely felt better having made at least this much progress :).    One disadvantage of having hoists only on the side of the boat, is that you get "twist" as you lift it up, resulting in the sideways posture you see above.    Easily fixed with a few heaves to get it straight up and down.

Getting ready to slide trailer under boat:

Boat looks pretty cool against that backdrop of trees.

You can't see it (didn't get a picture), but there is a large old- (or second-) growth stump off to the right - didn't anticipate this, we barely had room for the trailer.   Phew - that would not have been fun if I had had to move the hoist frame around.

Once the trailer was under the boat, it took a couple of hours of hoisting and raising the boat, trying out various positions of the keel bunk, and the clearance between the bow and the tongue cross-member.  

This is the final position we ended up with:

My son-in-law Erik was helping me - thanks Erik, much appreciated especially on a very hot day!  That's him with my granddaughter Jocelyn just behind the bow.  She's perfectly angelic, btw.

I like my boat trailer, but I wish they had built it with a slightly longer length, to allow the entire boat to nestle in between the side I-beams.   As it is, it is impossible to do that AND maintain the per-plan specs (ie, the fwd-aft relationship between keel bunk, boat, and axle) with this trailer, since the bow would hit the tongue cross-member.   Having no choice, I raised the keel bunk up until the bow clears the tongue cross-member by a few inches or so:

I am nervous about what this will mean for launching and recovery, but can't actually try those operations until I actually get the boat to the water, so...  You can see we also had to unbolt the winch support post - it got in the way.  Fortunately there was enough brake line slack to allow this.  

This picture shows my main reference points:

The blue tape in this picture has been there since I laminated the keel bunk board directly on the hull - it shows where the the fwd edge of the keel bunk should be (boat is slightly off in this picture).   The black mark on the trailer I-beam marks the per-plan distance from the axle to the front of the keel bunk (keel bunk is located about right).   So we spent a lot of time jockeying the boat fwd and aft to get that right, while also raising and lowering the front and rear bunk supports in order to adjust (minimize) the bow clearance, while also (finally) monitoring the fwd-after angle (as judged by me based on studying the plans (sheet 60 and I have become best buddies).

One thing we didn't do was adjust the boat side-supports.   I am going to wait to do that until the boat is permanently sitting on the trailer.    Also, you may note my trailer doesn't have the keel roller near the bow, as called for in the plans.  I am going to add it myself later - didn't think its absence would mess anything up.

Today I crawled around under the trailer marking the attachment holes, drilling them out, and attaching the keel bunk to the trailer:

After that I tried to staple the bunk carpet I had bought, to the keel bunk.   Didn't work - my staple gun was just too weak to make much of a dent with the staples in the side of the board.   Backup plan is to screw thin strips of aluminum down the side of the bunk, in order to securely hold the carpet.   Not sure if I should glue the carpet to the bunk board or not, but leaning against it (though I've heard of other builders doing it).