This is what we used to use (the best pictures I can find, unfortunately):
P1020742 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
P1020703 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
They were made by one of our club members, mostly from box section steel.
- Four rollers on the posts clamped to the cross-beam
- A central row of single rollers along the keel
- Winch mounted fairly high up
- Two dinghy launching trolley wheels per stub axle (to stop it digging in to the shingle on the beach, but probably a decent idea for the weight).
They survived about five or six years of fairly heavy use. The problems were: a. they tended to flex a bit along their length and b. the winch post bent backwards under load until a bit of reinforcement was added between the main beam and the winch post.
Other than that, pretty good. They were just about manageable for one person in the boat park.
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