What size RIB will go through my gate?

[happydays]

Hi all,

I'm looking to buy a RIB but I'm unsure what is the maximum I will be able to get through my gate. I have a 3m wide gate which is square on to a 4.8m wide road plus a 1m wide pavement.

I was hoping of buying something about 5.6 to 6m in length but obviously don't want to buy it and then find I can't get through the gate!

All advice gratefully received!

Cheers

[Downhilldai]

Love it.

[EnglishLes]

Draw a scale diagram of the road, path, opening and area inside gate. Make a cardboard cutout of various boat lengths and widths.

Then see which cutouts will go through the gate.

It might be worth having raised bits for any parts that the trailer cannot go through.

[falcon0310]

just knock house down,
carvans are cheap and less concill tax
or deflate tubes

[whisper]

Best to reverse it in or if necessary unhitch and push it in (be aware of hills and gravel though). Single axel would be a bit easier too..

[happydays]

Whisper & EnglishLes,

Many thanks for your helpful suggestions and the prompt replies! I'm sure guys with more experience could just look and say what would fit but there's the prob for the newbie!

[Nos4r2]

You really need the length of the boat when it's on the trailer...

[Smithyyy]

Whispers point re hills and gravel (add kerbs) is a good one. It's surprising hiw small a hill, hole, kerb or soft patch can make a rib really hard to push and need a good runup (assuming with a tight space you will be manhandling it rather than heroically reversing the car and trailer with absolute precision). We have a Tornado 5.8 and a driveway with the slightest of slopes, light gravel and a 10cm ramp into the garage, it takes the family of 4 to get the rib in/out and to build up the momentum. Couldn't steer round a 90 degree bend at the same time. So what the access is like in that way will matter also

Sorry, none of us have answered the real question, have we - how big can it be?!

Late thought - the dimensions you describe can't be that far off those of the space in a caravan park we keep the boat in most of the time - should be there this weekend, will measure up

[Leapy]

I can get a 2.2m wide Ribcraft 5.3 through our 2.25m garage door although I do have a straight run at it. As the drive slopes up to the garage, and as it's all but impossible to reverse a trailer with the sort of accuracy I need, and it's certainly impossible to push it up the slope, I use a 4x4 electric winch bolted at the back end of the garage floor and winch the (single axle) trailer in back end first. Steering is via the jockey wheel and the whole lot can be manoeuvred to the mm.

With the winch I don't actually need to have a straight run at the garage. As long as the winch rope doesn't snag on the garage door the trailer can approach the garage at any angle. I just get the transom vaguely lined up with the door opening and then straighten up with the jockey wheel at the last minute.

[happydays]

Many thanks for all your responses. Trying EnglishLes's suggestion it looks like a rib of 5.5m length may be a safer bet but I am interested to hear about your caravan park space Smthyyy.

Steve

[mister p]

Originally Posted by Downhilldai

Love it.

It all depends upon the seriousness of the gate I suppose.

[A.C.]

Originally Posted by Smithyyy

We have a Tornado 5.8 and a driveway with the slightest of slopes, light gravel and a 10cm ramp into the garage, it takes the family of 4 to get the rib in/out and to build up the momentum.

Have you considered bolting an anchor point at the far end of the garage. Then you can connect the trailer winch to the anchor point and use it to winch itself up into the garage(If it is a roller type trailer ensure you still have a secondary chain/strap connecting the boat to the trailer winch post).
I use the same system on a gravel drive which is on an incline and it is now only a one man job to get the boat into the garage.

[TomKat]

A mate bought a new 6m Humber and it has a very long section in front of the bow on the trailer which makes for a a huge turning circle required when backing his into his drive.
Best way to be sure is to see if someone near you or a dealer would be willing to back one in.

I have a 4.8m rib which is very easy to manual move on my drive but its flat and tarmac. I would say I could move up to 5.5m on my own but mates 6m Humber is a 2 person job I reckon.

[mister p]

That's an option, have a dealer reverse your RIB into your drive when you need it parked.

Drug dealer or City?

[Smithyyy]

OK, just back from the caravan park. Our boat is 2.3m wide, and from the front of the hitch to the back of the engines is 7.1m. The space we keep it in is in fact a bit wider than your gates at 4m, but the distance between the rows of vans either side of our space to the line of the hitches of the vans opposite (since our hitch has to miss theirs) is 5.3m so just a tad more than your road and pavement. So we have a little more room to play with. That said, steering the boat into/out of the slot isn't difficult, we miss the vans either side by a good margin as the boat turns. Watching what happened as we backed it in today, we didn't really use any of the space between the boat and the caravan on one side - which is 0.85m worth - at all. Just unhitched in the middle of the lane between the vans, spun her so the stern swung just past the van on one side and into into the parking space - then by the time the hitch came up against the vans opposite she was already turned most of the way - just had to back her up a foot or two to complete the swing then she was lined up with the parking slot.

So could we get her in if the space was a metre narrower? I think we could just, probably with quite a bit of forwards and backwards. But it'd be tight - probably wiser not to actually buy something this size without being able to try it in practice. Pretty sure nothing any bigger would go in though.

On the other hand, I think our draw bar's a bit long, a trailer with a shorter one would help (in fact, I think someone on here's got a removeable drawbar?). And if you were really keen, deflating the aft tubes would give you a bit more room.

Anyway, hope this helps somewhat

(I keep thinking there's a geometrical solution to this, if I ever work out how to solve it I'll be back!)

[9D280]

Couple of highlevel observations:

Depending on your rib, the trailer may be the issue width wise. IT took me ages to track down a sub 2m braked axle......

The width of the gate posts may be irrelevant if they are only 1& a bit m tall. Chances are even if your toobs are wider, they may overhang. I store a scary amount of rubbish under my toobs and the baot still goes in & out the garage no problem.

Rig LOA- remmeber most trialers are "spec-ed" for a solid boat. Your rib will have a good 0.4m overhang at the bow and depending on he make & model at least another 0.5m overhang at the stern. Hence why most rib trailers have what seems like a ridiculous length of drawbar..... Mine was speced for a 4.2m boat if that puts it in prespective - measure the solid bit of the hull from the transom to the bow eye.

What's your tow car? If it can take the weight unbraked, you have likely just saved yourself a metre of excess drawbar.
If you are forced down a braked route then get creative with the winch post fixing - I manage to fit a 5m boat into a 5.7m garage on a braked trailer. I have to make sure the jockey wheel handle is out the way of the winch handle before working either of them, but it reduced the length of my drawbar poking out ahead of the boat to almost unbraked proportions.


If all else fails, do you really need the gate?

[Smithyyy]

Sorry, just realised I misread it, you've got 5.8m of road and pavement so more room that way than I have in the caravan park - so much the better

Anyway, I've been trying to remember my long-ago geometry (well the wife was watching a romcom). I think it works like the below - and my theory is I could get my rib through your gate.

Right lads and lassies, cold towels wrapped round the heads and ready for some maffs? Then let's go with the proposed Ribnet solution to “can I get my boat through my gate?”!

The problem is to get the boat (assume it’s unhitched and can be manhandled) turned enough to get the back end through the gate without the front end hitting the wall on the other side of the road. The LEAST angle from the centreline of the road that the boat has to get to, to get through the gate, is when with one side just against one gatepost, the aft corner on the other side just touches the opposite wall (if you can turn it more than that, it gets easier to get it through – push it back a bit more and turn it a bit more, repeat, etc).The question is how wide the road needs to be to get to that minimum angle.
Draw a triangle from the aft corner of the boat touching the wall, towards the opposite gatepost until you reach the centreline of the boat, then go aft along the centreline to the centre of the transom, then back to the corner of the boat.

If the boat width is W and the gate width is G, then the distance along the centreline which is inside the gate (call it LG) is given by
(G/2)^2 = (W/2)^2 + LG^2 so
LG = SQRT [(G/2)^2 - (W/2)^2)]

Then the length (along the centreline again) of the boat and trailer which is in the road, call it LR, is
LR = L – LG where L = overall length from back of boat to hitch

Now draw a triangle from the hitch, along the centreline to the line between the gateposts, then back down perpendicular to the road until a 90 degree turn brings you back parallel to the road back to the hitch. The side perpendicular to the road is how wide the road needs to be for the boat to fit at this angle, call it R

This triangle is similar to the first one, where the first one had hypotenuse G and the side opposite the angle between road centreline and boat centreline W, the second one has LR and R respectively. Therefore R/ LR = W/G, so R = LR * W / G

Substituting
R = LR * W/G = (L – SQRT [(G/2)^2 –(W/2)^2]) * (W/G)
Which for my boat (L = 7.1, W = 2.3) and your gate (G = 3.0) gives R = 4.70

So if that’s right, you could - just - turn my boat to get to the minimum angle needed to get through your gate if the road was 4.70m wide .You've got 5.8m, so should be fine. In fact reversing the maths, with 5.8m of road and pavement it should be theoretically possible to get the boat through a gate only 2.43m wide....

Note "should" and “theoretically” though, I'm not guaranteeing anything!

Any other mathy types want to check my workings?!

And if I can work out how to post it, I've even got a diagram!

[whisper]

Fookin Ell

Whatever you get kick the mudguards off before you get home that way you wont get upset when you hit them on your gate post

[diesel do]

You lost me after the angle of the dangle.

Basically if your going fast enough you'll get it on the drive.

[ShinyShoe]

Mathematically do you not need to know the 'pivot' point of the trailer which is presumably the mid point of the axle?