Hello Dino,
It's Gaz here - the guy who bought your steering kit from you at the weekend.
I cannot recommend a trailer to you, but I can point out a couple of pitfalls with a certain trailer that I bought, just in case you end up trying to go down the same route that I did.
Like you, I was having dilemmas about which trailer to buy for my Bombard Aerotec 380. Then, one day, I found an old advertisment on the internet, from a guy who was selling a 380 together with a De Graff trailer. The advert was out of date, so I couldn't contact the guy to see how well the trailer worked with the Bombard, so I contacted De Graff directly instead.
I explained what type of boat I had (including the fact that it had a deep V high pressure hull), and they insisted that they had the best trailer for the job, which was this one here:
http://www.degraafftrailers.co.uk/In...rs/IB350-2.JPG
They explained that their trailers were the most suitable on the market because the weight of the boat is largely taken up by the planks on either side of the trailer, on which the tubes can rest, properly supported, and that this then prevents the hull of the boat from being too stressed from underneath, and that the trailer is fully adjustable for height, width, etc, etc - basically, he managed to sell it to me over the phone, which is fair enough.
In the end I drove all the way up there, bought the trailer, and then drove home again. However, when I came to put the Aerotec on the trailer I discovered that the hull did sit fully on the base of the trailer, which meant that the weight of the boat was not remotely being taken on the tubes/supported by the planks.
It was clear that, despite their insistence that this was the trailer for my boat, De Graff hadn't been listening to me when I was describing the the deep-v hull, and that they had made the assumption that the Aerotec had a shallower draft, like most other inflatables. And no amount of adjustment of the supporting arms of the trailer was going to account for the depth of the hull either!
I had just driven a few hundred miles to collect the trailer, and I was in no mood to drive another couple of hundred back to return it, so I set about trying to raise the planks enough to support the weight of the boat, by fitting chocks of wood under them. This turned out to be a frustrating endeavour, and my lack of tools and DIY skills meant that the result was far from satisfactory.
At this point I had the right hump, and rang De Graff to let off a bit of steam in their direction. They were not particularly interested in taking their trailer back, but did suggest that I remove the supporting cross bars that hold the planks, from underneath the main part of the trailer, and relocate them on top.
I did this and, although it does indeed provide the extra space for the hull to fit into, it is quite unstable at the point where the crossbar sits on top of the main frame (using the existing u-bolts), and I'm fairly certain that it is only a matter of time before something goes wrong in this area (actually, the whole trailer is held together by u-bolts, which do not look, to my, admittedly untrained, eye, to be as sturdy as a welded frame).
I will get some stronger bolts to hold it all together, if I can, but this means that I will be be rebuilding the trailer to a certain extent, and I don't know if this will have any implications in the event of an accident, etc.
In a nutshell, then, in my opinion, there are some good/different design concepts in the De Graff trailer, in terms of supporting ordinary inflatable boats - however, if you want to support an Aerotec on one of these trailers you are going to have to re-build it to accommodate the deep-v hull.
The choice is yours.
P.S: Yes, I know that the moral of the story is to try your boat on a trailer before you buy - but this isn't always practicable (and if the manufacturer is actually insisting that your boat will fit, you have to assume that he knows at least something of what he is talking about). I would be interested to hear if anybody else had a similar problem with this particular trailer, with regards to an Aerotec, and what solutions they came up with?
Oh, by the way, I launch my boat the same way that Derisher does, and for the same reasons.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dino89
hi
thinking of selling my searider and getting my bombard on a trailer question is
whats the best trailer to get any recomendations
ideally want to be able to get it off the trailer and uuse the lauch wheels to get it in the water any one use a trailer at the momanet comment please
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