With rising fuel costs and the continued desire to escape New England Winters, a few of us here are talking about the practicality of a multi-boat trailer for travel to major events around the country. I have a H21 trailex that since I have owned it has doublestacked more than 18K miles, so what I am talking about is a trailer that could carry 3 or more boats. I know these exist, and rather than reinvent the wheel, can anyone with pics of these post them here please? I expect that we will have to take the boats apart, but figure the assembly time is well worth the potential fuel savings.
Thanks in advance!
Chris

Chris,

If you don't mind taking the boats apart, an enclosed race car trailer works very well. They depriciate fast and you can find a nice one for under $5K and most likely as low as $2K in you shop around at the end of the season. I prefer Pace American, but there are other good ones.

You can live in it at the races as you saw us do at Sandy Hook.

With proper racks you could get 4-5 sets of hulls inside and even a whole boat on top. You've seen Nigel's rig. I haven't built a cradle for the roof yet, but you use the trail gate as a lift, using a small power winch.

Are those trailers typically tall enough to put the boats in sideways?

There is a group of Hobie 16's that trailer 6 boats together. They are always at Spring Fever and are from NY.

They come in 102" (8.5) and 96" (8) wide. Most built in the last 10 years are 102". My 102 has a door opening of 94".

Nigel had a custom wider one built by Pace so a 8.5' cat will fit inside flat.

You could tilt one cat a little and get it inside a 102 without any problem. The main issue is getting them in and out. Sort of awkward without several people. With a group going together, that isn't a problem.

Any links on how to homebuild these trailers? I know I read about one such project in Epoxyworks, but would like to see other in-depth articles.

HCA Division 11 (Mid-Atlantic) owns the Deca-stack trailer:


It can haul as many as 10 boats, but they start to run out of room in the two huge sailboxes underneath the bottom two boats. It's made a trip to California and one to Florida and it will be headed to Iowa in about a month.

It was custom-built for a cost of about $7,000. Weighs about 6,000 lbs fully loaded.

Rob Jerry (dealer in Syracuse) has a Penta-stack trailer - three boats assembled, stacked, with two boats disassembled and in-between the hulls of the second and third boats.

http://www.acatsnw.com/trailer/trailers.html
Here is a link to an a-cat site that they have set-up specically concerning single, double and triple stack trailers. The west coast group uses a trailer that I believe Skip Elliot owns to transport up to 8 a-cats broken down.

Chris:

There are a couple of Double Stack trailers in the California area that can take as many as four Formula 18s. One sits on the bottom assembled straddling the catbox. The others are taken apart and put upside down on the rack above instead of putting a single assembled boat there. they do not add much more windage than a double stacked, just a bit more weight. Add about 1000 lbs including gear to the mix, compared to the double stacker.

Later,
Dan

I currently have a 24' x 8.5' enclosed car trailer, we had 7 H14's, and H16's in NY last year. If packed correctly I think we could have gotten at least another two boats in there.

My current work trailer is a 7'x16' with a flat nose. When it comes time to replace that I'm planning on getting a 8.5'x18' w/ a 7' wall, ( I hate hitting my head), and with a V nose. My hope is that I can build a rack for my boat and then just slide the rack and boat into the trailer at an angle. It'd be nice for doing events in the winter when I don't want the boat to get beaten to death with sand and salt from the roads, plus as someone else mentioned you can sleep in it as well.

So how do people deal with axles? I have been pondering this for a while and it seems with 2 or 3 boats on a steel trailer I would want a 2k lb axle but when I just have 1 boat I would only need a 1k lb axle.

I am afraid that with just 1 boat on a 2k lb axle the ride would be too harsh. Any experience?

How about using an air bag suspension system?

I suppose air bags would work but it seems a little over the top. I thinking that people double stack all the time how do they handle the widely variable weight?

Get a torsion axle. I've got a 1750# axle on my cat trailer and it pulls fine. Not as "springy" as springs. No pun intended, of course...

My Zieman trailer for the 18-2 is rated at 2K hence my earlier thread on trailer painting as I plan to use this trailer for other things. Doesn't seem to be any problem with it bouncing around etc.... and rides nice when just hauling the boat. I guess it is how you disperse the load is what maters.

Chris,
The HT Class had a trailor that stacked 6 HT's fully beamed up and with tramps on. The towers bolted down to the floor and were made out of steel. The whole trailor was very heavy and pretty hard to load. The upper boats took 4 people to load.

I cant seem to find a picture of that trailor.

My opinion is that its easier to take boats apart if you are driving to FL during the winter.

If I were going to do it, I'd make the have floor, and a aluminum frame to hold the boats, and a outer frame and then stretch a rubber/plastic material over it to keep everything clean.

Kind of like the car carriers that have soft sides.

Bill

This trailor is interesting.

Indeed it is...and more fodder for Rick's argument that a simple flatbed covers it all <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

What a great idea!

Wouldn't that put a lot of stress on the sides of the hulls?