Assi wa nou gepak is enni deur nie eers kan toe......
Nog altyd geweet Warren is n…
Nog altyd geweet Warren is n man met n plan....
Man met 'n plan? …
Man met 'n plan?
Warren, is it compatible with your "hitch up guide"? 
I've been yanking everyones leg It's a jolly good plan...
Its an extention to launch boats....
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Having had several boats myself, it's actually a jolly good plan.
I had something similar, except it was 3 - 4 m long, hinged to the side of the trailer, withh the coupling faing back when not in use, un-pin, swing it round, bolt it up front so that it is not double articulated and couple to the towbar.
With Sunbird, (a 186 Interceptor cabin cruiser with a 115 Yamaha outboard) I had Steelite fabricate a launching cradle front & back, this enabled me to launch & recover the boat on my own in choppy water....
Launching and recovering a boat off a slipway can be very tricky. If it's a concrete slipway, you dont know how far it goes under the water and you may just find yourself dropping the back of your car off the slipway before the boat floats.
Best you "walk" the slipway first.
I've seen: - People launch without putting the drain plugs in tha transom, then wonder why their boat sank / People bump the boat off the trailer without fastening the boat to the back of the trailer. and the boat does what any good boat wants to do..... Float off into the sunrise.....
Once fella with a breakneck trailer, "dry launched" a boat onto the beach........ he bumped off short of the water....
(Bump-off = reverse quite quickly then stomp on the brakes, and the boat slides off the runners)
Three rivers in Vereeniging is notorious for people launching skew off the slipway....
If launching can be a laugh a minute you should see recovering...... especially when there is a slight chop on the water and everybody is waiting to come out or use the slipway....
Now NOBODY want's to look like a twit...... Ooooo boy, have I seen some howlers....
Once the fella could not get the boat to sit on the runners due to the chop.... Eventually recovered with the boat skew on the trailer, and when he could not manually get the boat straight... (a boat is blooming heavy, out of the water, especially at the back) ride off with the boat still skew....
Probibly cracked the hull on the way home as the hull was not resting on the re-inforced stress ridges.....
Lots of fun.....
PIC
Sunbird (boat on Right), with another 186 Interceptor in the middle.... At my place on Vaal dam called "Net-die-plek"
Net vir interesantheid, Suid…
Net vir interesantheid, Suid Afrika is die enigste plek waar mense van die beach af launch.
Die oorseese mense staan altyd verstom oor hoe ons dit doen.
Warren en Ski sal saam stem - dit is seker een van die "trickyste" maniere om jou boot in die see te kry, as jy nie daai golwe mooi lees nie dan le jy en jou boot hoog en droog op die strand.
Another of my ideas
Now that I’m reminded about boats............................ And “maak-N-plan” may I introduce you to Samson...
One of the things we offered our customer’s at my place Net-die-plek, was to launch people’s boats...
So if the visitor opted for us to launch his boat, he signed a little indemnity form and we hitched the boat to our Ford no 4 tractor....
But often the fella never had a jockey, or the boat was very heavy, and to lift it up to the height of the ball on the front of the tractor was just about impossible....
So I invented “”Samson”...........
Basically with the boat still couped to the visitor’s vehicle, we lifted Samson over the coupling, lowered the hook and cranked the pulley and lifted the boat off the vehicles coupling.
Once off the customer drove off and we drove the tractor in and lowered the coupling onto the ball of the tractor.
Quite easily, because the coupling was suspended on a rope, and was easily moved around a bit, which made aligning the coupling onto the ball very easy...
Once hitched onto tractor, we simply pushed it in, bumped the boat off and job done.....
Made quite a lot of money out of that.....
Arrie ja.....
Our charter skippers are renowened throughout the world....
Disrespect the sea and it will have you.........
Beaching
RULE NUMBER 1
Make sure you have enough petrol before you initiate beaching... That’s why we use clear 25l plastic drums... We can see how much petrol there is... Most fellas transfer to the 2 tank reserve tank..... You don’t want to be running out of petrol when you commit.
RULE NUMBER 2
Run your engine for about 5 minutes before initiating beaching to ENSURE you motor is 100 %
RULE NUMBER 3 / 4/ 5 Safety Safety Safety.....Put your bloody life jacket’s on and tie anything loose down.
Then... you initiate.......and here’s where you have to have eyes in the back of your head.....
Pick a rolling wave and run in on the back of the wave, DO NOT get ahead of the break, do not let the next wave catch up with you
DO NOT CHICKEN OUT! If you have as problem go full throttle and head straight for the beach
When your wave has broken, ride it for as long as you can without letting the wave behind you catch up.....
When you judge your distance to be correct (skill) Pick your moment and commit....
PUT FULL THROTTLE. Ride over the foam and hit the beach.....
Sounds simple.....
Not so in real life...... I used to go out quite often in my 3.8m rubber duck...
Now if that sounds scary, try surf launching......
The skill there is hitting the first breaker / getting out behind the breakers at the correct time....There is too much to consider to give a description Timig is everything... You have to be able read the wave AND THE NEXT WAVE....., getting the boat’s nose (bow) up, then powering off just enough to carry you over the wave.
Too much and you go air-born and easily flip – dive into the next wave........... Too little and the wave will flip you over backwards....
Ek het inflatable racing…
Ek het inflatable racing gedoen vir hele klompie jare, vir kampioenskap punte moes ons al drie diciplines doen; Off Shore, circut, and river racing.
Off shore racing you always start off and end on the beach. Always a running start, pilots line up 20 m from the boat, on the whistle all run to their boats drag it in the surf, start the motor and of you go. In and out of the breakers around buoys and then out on to the beach.
Unfortunately because of not wanting to be left behind there is not much time to judge the waves on the in or out trip.
Yeah lots of fun and lots of mishaps!
The one I enjoyed most was river racing, usually over three days, covering about 60km per day, hard work but fantastic fun.
You need a diferent boat for each dicipline, circut, a Zodiac or similar with high lifters, off shore a bombard or similar with a nice keel, and river racing a flat inflatable floor mounted in the middle of the pontoons. Motors had to be the same size throughout the season, I raced in the 750cc class which, depending on the make is about 50 to 55 hp.
Bit heavy for river racing but nice speed for circut and off shore. We never had pencil nose boats in those years, although I owned two in later years after I quit racing, lovely high speed boats with lots of manouvarbility.
It was with the internatinol races that I found that we are the only people to launch from the beach, the overseas pilots could not believe that we do that!
Incidently do you know why on a recreational boat it is a skippers licence and for racing it is called a pilots licence? I could never work this one out?
Arrie as far as I know...
The main difference is a Skipper’s licence permits you to operate commercially, IE operate a watercraft whilst carrying paying passengers, whereas a pilot’s licence does not.
There might be other supplementary restrictions, such as distance from shore / exclusions regarding seaworthy requirements regarding boat design IE freeboard / number of seperate flotation chambers / equipment levels such as bailing equipment / alternative means of moving <paddles> must have a medical kit (specified equipment such as a needle to remove splinter’s & pain tablets) / number of flairs and so on, and whether or not you may or may not operate at night, that I’m not aware of as I did not do racing, I did my skipper’s.
Pilot licence you do not…
Pilot licence you do not need all the emergency equipement, flares and first aid, bailers, paddles etc.
Only concentrate on the rules, no restriction on nautical miles on the sea and those things, concentrate also on your ability to handle the craft, you get a different license for each class, engine size, type of boat etc.
As matter of interest, the inflatable boat association falls under the auspices of the formula one boat association.
When we started playing with the ducks for racing, we applied to the F1 ass. for guideance. The generall feeling from them was that we should be licensed the same as them, because of the degree off dificulty in handling a duck.
It was good years and I still miss it a lot, got such an adrenalin rush out of it, I started with motorbike racing, only did club races, but never got good at it.
My cousin from Holland was a pilot for KLM and he brought me a duck - French build Bombard.
This was in 1980, had a lot of fun with that thing, I must have been one off a very few people who owned a duck in those years. Later on I started meeting chaps with ducks at the dam. We started talking and eventually we decided to see if we could navigate the Tugella right to the coast.
As it turned out to be an expensive excersize, we approached some companies for sponsor ship, Lion Lager agreed and the first trip, not a race but an adventure to see if it could be done!
From there things just took off, after the "Lion Lager Tugela Chalenge, we formed the Inflatable boat association, got regocnition as a racing body and the sport just started growing.
In the late 80ts it was the fastet growing sport in SA. Local guys started building boats and some of them as good or even better as Zodiac, bombard and Metzeller.
Jef Stevens buid the 'River Rider" a long very durable boat made of a mixture of Hypalon and Neoprene, still the best "white water" power boat. Abavi got build in Kemton under license of the mother company, etc.
Unfortunatly the cost killed the sport, I was lucky got full sponser ship from Suzuki, new boats and motor every year plus all entrance fees cost to get there and back etc. covered.
Because of low media coverage sponsors became shy off dishing out money and it was way to expensive for privateers.
Mine was an Impact...
I commissioned the build and had quite a few extras, including hi-jackers, transom stabilisers, Yellow & grey, had 4 flotation chambers (not the usual 3), and bigger pontoons for a little extra freeboard, All round grabline & 2 handles per side.
It was built by ????????? In Kemption park.... Think he also had something to do with racing ducks
Although it was a semi-ridged, although I never actually dismantled it, on a fully galvinised trailer.
Then I put a souped up 40 Hp Suzukie on the back... Damn thing was fast.... so bloody fast it was downright dangerous... Named it Dilly Duck.... Could pop the nose so high, the points of the pontoons at the back touched water....
Yip.... did my skips....... Had it for a while then migrated back to glass boats... for inland waters....
Then I got the property at the Vaal (75Ha)... Net-die-Plek..... had plans of getting out of industry & having a boating / fishing place
Summer was great.... made lot's of moola, winter was dead as a nun's whatchmacallit..... So year on year was break-even
Gave that up shortly after an individual/s tried to build a squatter shack and gave up boating as well....
Seems you and me have followed similar paths... Also did a heck of a lot of biking, from way back in the late 70's Not competative stuff just rallies / touring / and so on....
Also got gatvol with that, and now I go fishing..... Well, throwing pap & tick in the water for fish.... Mostly I just want to get away from people / cars / noise / society... to disconnect as it where
Die enigste boot bouers in…
Die enigste boot bouers in Kempton wat ducks gebou het was Dawie Schoeman, het onder lisensie onder andere Abavi, franse boot gebou. Puik vakmanskap!
Ek het vir 'n tydlang bote getoets en write ups gedoen, daar is die enigste ondervinding wat ek van 'semi's" gehad het.
Nooit 'n fan van semis gewees nie, lekker boot maar net nie so lekker soos 'n duck nie.
Sal anderdag bietjie meer skryf oor ducks of soos ek hulle genoem het 'Blow Jobs" engels vir opblaas bote.
Nie vandag meer in die bui om lekker te gesels nie, gaan 'n ent in die bos stap en op 'n klip sit en die lewe bedink.
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