While trying to figure out how to flip my boat for a winter restoration.. I came upon this great How not To video. Enjoy the afternoon..
12 Responses to “If You Ever Thought One Inch Was No Big Deal!”
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No pro here, but is that a lesson in how not to flip your nicely finished boat? Sure that woman will never consider an inch insignificant again!
No way I’m going near the above comment re women considering an inch insignificant.
But upon seeing this video, now I understand why Tommy Mertaugh suggested I not be present when he flipped my boat. It wasn’t personal injury concerns. It was concern I’d have a cardiac arrest if anything like this happened!
The trick to rolling a boat with straps, is using two additional straps that wrap around to boat and attach to the engine stringer… The straps go in oposite directions… You let one out while you take one in this will controls the roll… You can then move it as fast or as slow as you want…
They got very lucky, not only the boat did not get hurt… No people got hurt either…
What did they think would happen? Did they not account for the loops being longer with the boat on edge than when horizontal? I watched it 3 times now and I don’t see anything breaking or going wrong, they simply had a really bad plan. Hopefully there wasn’t too much rope burn!
Frank is right about controlling the turn mechanically. You can not flip a boat that is suspended in a sling without mechanical control of the roll. We have devised a way by which two straps are wrapped around the boat once. We use four chainfalls (one on each corner) that roll on trolleys that are attached to a gantry cranes. The two chainfalls on one side “pay out” while the two on the other side are raised. Since the chainfalls can roll on the gantry beams they assume the width of the boat during the whole roll. This eliminates the quick flipping you saw in the video because the weight has passed the center of gravity. Then again, I’ve seen many YouTube videos of guys drinking beer in the driveway flipping boats over on tires and carpet…….the right answer lies somewhere in between!
These people are very lucky, especially the guy who just climbed out from under the boat.
Didn’t the book warn “beware, the center of gravity shifts dangerously quick”? (The bottom weighs much more than the deck).
Their control cable needed to control the fall of the port side (thats the way they chose to go), by holding it back, not pulling it in that direction.
That control cable is then re-attached to pull the starboard side up (with a saftey rope to stop that from going over-center).
Had they had the boat just a few inches lower when this happened, they would now be looking at replacing a sheer clamp and sheer plank as well.
Legs can be broken easily here, its a good thing they were not (necks as well, if they are crazy enough to crawl under a lifted boat, that guy should go buy a lottery ticket).
This look’s like it happened over at the Murphy’s place in Schenectady.
First Rule: Never organize a cocktail party to celebrate flipping a freshly completed boat.
Second Rule: Save the cocktail party / celebration for the MOCK launch, a few days after the test launch.
Third Rule: Obey Murphy’s Law
They looked surprised it did not hit the ground. That seems to imply that even if they had proper control cables, it was just dumb luck the cradle lines weren’t an inch too long.
How did they get the boat bottoms up without figuring this out? Perhaps the paint fumes wiped out their boat rolling brain cells sometime during the restoration.
Murphy’s Law says ‘Anything can go wrong, And, at the worst possible moment!’
I learned this law at sea, over five years, just to get licensed as a Coast Guard Operator (paying passengers).
These people are just plain LUCKY!
I do take issue with the ‘boys’, those willing to risk life and limb pretending to try stopping the incident. They were obviously smart enough not to ‘grab ahold’.
I would humbly ask, however, how the lovely voice-over howling of females, in the background, helped the situation at all? (The soundtrack is the best part of this vid)
These boys just lost an inch; They gave the girls the upper hand here (note facial expressions).
Well it sounds like all the boat roller experts out there need to do a “how to roll a boat” video …..we’ve seem the how to clean and do deck seams, fill a varnish scarf, etc. sounds like it might be a helpful and safety tip for us all to see.
I can’t agree more with Allen. This can be one of the most dangerous operations in boat restoration for both the boat and the boat rollers. This is not something to be done by the inexperienced.
I have rolled a U-22 and we used a gurney and chainfall to control the equilibrium with people at the ends and rolled it inch by inch, one side dropping as the chain fall let out and the other chain fall taking up the slack and lifting….slow and easy……letting out,,,,pulling up…….its best to get 70% of the width of the boat between the boat bottom and the ground before you roll…..and god SLOW !! Safe Rolling..still want to see the video of a good and safe one !!! Thanks Matt and Texx