How do you trailer your boat?

I'm new to the F16, lots more stuff than my old low tech cats, set up is taking forever right now. Do you guys take everything off of the mast to trailer or do you leave certain things on? On my old boats I left the shrouds, trap wires, forestay, and bridles on. So far on the Viper I have trailered it just like I bought it with everything taken off of the mast.

If you do take everything off what's the best way to store the various wires? I keep having a birds nest of dyneema and wire every time I get ready to rig.....

I keep a roll of painters tape handy and tape everything to the mast, except the spin halyard. I put a double wrap about every six feet.

the spin halyard stays attached to the sail and goes into the bag.

Te guy I bought the boat from told me to loosen the diamond wire tension for trailering long distances as well. Necessary?

I never have but there are better sailors than I on this board.

If I know I'm going to be setting my boat up as soon as I get home, to sail it, and the drive is only 2hrs. or so, I'll leave all the wires attatched to the mast and just coil them up and tie them with the trap handles and the various other strings on the tramp, then slide them under the hiking straps to keep them from going any where.

If I know the boat is going to be sitting for quite a while (months) under cover, before I sail it again, then I'll strip the mast, put all the wires coiled up into the box. Just tie them all up separately and you'll avoid the birds nest of wires when you open the box.

No.


I strip everything off the mast basically. I leave the diamonds on if I can, (I start running out of room with more than three masts on my trailer and sometimes the diamonds have to come off), and the main halyard.

I strip most everything off the boat too. Basically everything that can come off easily I remove. Shrouds, bridle/forestay come off, all the sheets. I leave basically all of the jib hardware/lines on, using the lines to tie up the jib track. I also use a bungee that goes through the spinnaker blocks to keep them from flopping around too much.

Like Timbo, I keep as much rigged as I can IF the trailering is relatively short, say under six hours, and I am going to rig the boat again soon. Otherwise I remove as much as I can. It has to be an unusual situation to remove the diamond wires. There is no reason to remove them normally. A good way to contain everything quickly and securely is to use plastic stretch wrap on a handle which you can buy now at most big box stores and hardware stores. It comes in several widths - I like the 6" width for all-purpose use. One roll lasts a long time even when you use a lot to pack up and it is fairly inexpensive.

If you trailer frequently then it is worth the time to develop cradles, jigs, devices, etc. that make de-rigging and trailering simpler, more secure, and quicker. For example the Taipan was usually sold with a trailer set-up that included a sail box and a receiver/stop (Y shaped) that the dolphin striker slid into and held the boat securely sideways, and prevented forward, and even backwards movement when latched. I have seen that idea developed so that the whole light weight rig can be moved off the trailer with its own wheels and moved around to free up the trailer for other uses as needed while the boat is still secured. It just depends on your handiness and whether or not it makes sense for the way you use your boat and trailer.

Why exactly is everything stripped off of the boat in most cases? Are you concerned about items falling off, or damage due to the elements of sun and rain? Or is it purely for organization to make things easier?

I leave all of my wires coiled on the tramp, spin haylard on the mast and jib sheeting still hooked up. With protection form the sun, I do not see how it would benefit me much to remove all of that each trip. Granted most of my trips are short, less than an hour.

For me I usually have to drive 5 hours to get to a regatta. I don't like things rubbing and chaffing, plus if they're in the box they aren't getting exposed to the elements. Same if its just parked, it keeps the sun off of what I can since I don't have a place to park my boat and trailer inside with any regularity.

Back when I had my I20, I trailered with my spin halyard still rigged on the mast. When I got to the regatta and looked it over, I could see it had chafed against the spreaders/mast connection, enough so that I didn't trust it not to fail during the regatta. Luckily Ding had a spare spin halyard and leant it to me, but for the reason of chafing, I don't trailer with soft lines attached to the mast anymore. (and thanks again Ding, I still owe you beers for that!)

The trap wires and shrouds/forestay, I will coil and tie to the tramp for a short drive, so they don't fall off or chafe, but no soft lines in the 75mph breeze for me anymore!

The reason I don't leave everything out on a long drive is, 'road grime' gets all over everything. Ever take a close look at your hulls after you've been folowing a Semi truck spewing...what ever? Or after driving through rain? That crap is now all over your hulls, and everything else that's not in the box.

This past Tradewinds, I was driving down rt.27 through central Florida to Miami, through Sugar Cane Country (Clewiston, etc.) while they were harvesting the sugar cane and buring the fields. When I got to Islemorada, I noticed my boat (which I had just waxed the day before) was covered with black, sticky smoke/dust residue from the sugar cane field fires, as the smoke was blowing across the road.

I was really glad I'd stripped off just about everything else and had it all in the box, but I had to wash the boat all over again! And the mast, and the spreaders and diamonds, but not all the trap and shroud wires.

Some of the UK guys have developed an uber quick way of travelling the boat.

Set the boat facing foward if your mast post is foward, lock the boat down to the trailer so it won't move, with straps. Lash / hold the prodder up and too the mast post without undoing anything including the front stays. Lower the mast to the rear with everything attached including the spinny in its sock. The prodder should stay held up in position by the mast post.

Put the mast base foward into the mast post cradle, all the stays ect should now be roughly sitting on the trapeze. Curl up all the stays and tape them to the hiking straps. Put about 3 bungies around the mast to hold any excess stay length to stop it flapping. Put a kiddies basketball or approx. that size ball into the spinny retrieve mouth and put a bit of gaffa over it to stop it coming out. Lock the mast down, remove the rear rudders etc and fit your lights, and you are on your way.

At the launch site undo the stay tapes etc, be methodical as its very easy to get the mast rotated 180 degrees, raise the mast as per normal, fix the forestay, undo the prodder and retension, remove the ball and you are underway in about 30 minutes.

The furtherest I have travelled is about 5 hours at about 70mph without any problems. Oh and don't forget to remove the mast post before taking the boat off the trailer, it tends to sstop on the prodder stays. Quick simple and you never get that spinnaker first raise problem of oops didn't get that right, issue

I'm trying to visualize this but I have no earthly idea what a "prodder" is. Can you clarify? I even Googled the word with no luck.

spin pole?

In Canada we have been doing this for years. 15 minutes from the highway to mast up ready to sail.

Even works for F20carbon but it takes a couple more minutes.

Leave the spin pole on. Unclip the bag from the tramp and pole and put it in the hoop. Nacra supplies a cover for the hoop and you put that cover on. Use electrical tape to tape the pole to the forward mast support. Use electric tape to tape everything else up.

I took a 1" PVC pipe and cut it to around 6" or 8". Once I had this I then used two galvanized straps with galvanized bolts and nuts to mount the PVC pipe horizontally to the mast post. I then used rubber cement to attach marine carpet around the PVC pipe and up the side of the mast post. Finally I drilled a .25" hole through the PVC vertically, between the eye straps and ran a .25" shock cord through it. I tied a stopper knot on the bottom and a bowline on the other end, just short enough that you have to stretch it to go around the PVC piece sticking out out to the port side (PVC sticks out to port side, it's flush on the starboard side of the mast post.) This gives me a nice cushioned area to rest my spin pole on. I'll take picture if anyone cares.

I actually trailer my boat pretty much the same way as said earlier, and I leave my spin pole completely set up (except the spin pole bridles which are quick disconnects ...C2 and Viper style with the knot.) I leave my spin bag on and have reached speeds of 80 mph with it trailing behind my truck. My spin pole bridles with yellow telltales rest inside the bag; I have watched it while driving and it doesn't get affect by the wind. Most of the wind is blocked by the truck.

Just my $.02.

Oh, and I also leave everything rigged that I can, and I stuff all of the excess lines into my big tramp bag. I store it next to my house this way with a top gun cover and it all stays dry underneath.

I'd like to see a picture.