Trying a new method to pull my marine rail boat lift for the winter.

[harringtondav]

I've been using a homemade pontoon winch to lift the end of my rail lift up to get the last 40' out of the water in winter. This has worked, but is a PITA. Someone has to swim to the pontoon winch and drop the lift, disconnect the cable from the winch and tie it to a retrieval line for fall. Reverse operation in the fall and hand crank the rail up. Cold water in the spring and fall. I'm generally the someone who gets wet. Fetch and return the pontoon winch from storage twice yearly.

After the last pull I was on SS and ready to simplify the program....with my wallet. I sprung for the second bag even though one would raise the lift. Patching kits don't work so well under 9' of water. The lift bag system worked perfectly on dry land. Sept-Oct will tell the story. This outfit doesn't compete with iBoats, so I'll venture a share: http://www.boatlifthelper.com/

 

[jakedaawg]

What's a rail boat lift? Is that the railroad track things that run into a boat house? They call things different in different parts of the country I've noticed.

 

[harringtondav]

What's a rail boat lift? Is that the railroad track things that run into a boat house? They call things different in different parts of the country I've noticed.

Yes. A pair of channel rails starting on the hard and ending in the muck. Ties and stanchion supports to hold the thing together. A flanged wheel carriage to carry the boat and a traction winch to launch and retrieve.

Ours is 60' long. 12' lift. Very handy on the Mississippi with large level changes. I pull the last 40' in fall for winter ice.

 

[Howard Sterndrive]

Marine Rail or Marine Railway is the common term in my area. I'm very fortunate to be on the end of our lake that mouths into the river so my track stays in all winter.. no ice push. Not common. But mine has been in since 1999 or so. It's all steel and heavy. Last time I did take the track, we just hooked onto 4x4 truck and it slid up onto shore. Then we used tubes to float it all back out and kayak to retrieve tubes.


Have seen a few collapsing tower systems around that use the rail winch to cantilever all the track up . The ss cables just lay beside the track in summer.