Quote:
Originally Posted by Pricestavern
.... Plus, I'd be concerned about the effect of my boat bouncing around against it during rough weather. The dock shown looks like pretty light construction. I'd worry that it would get bent or kinked with the boat shoving it around. I don't think dock whips would be usable with this system, either.....
|
That dock in the video did seem a bit lightweight, but then a lot of rigidity is achieved with L-sections or a wider dock. As I mentioned, my 6x30 crankup is quite torsionally rigid, being anchored solidly at the shore, and I do have whip mounting plates welded onto the frame; the whips bolt through the deck sections to those plates, and they don't move at all. The boat pitches substantially when a big boat wake crashes ashore, and the whips take all the action, while the dock stays put.
As for ease of installation, I turn the winch handle and the frame sets gently down to the bottom. I carry each cedar deck section, 6 by just under 4, out to the frame and set it in place; a section weight is mid-upper 50s (lb), an easy one-man move. When I get decking laid out to where the lift cable attaches, I detach that and wind it back onto the winch reel for the summer, then drop the last two deck sections on. I have to lay down on the dock surface to reach under with a wrench when I bolt the whip bases in place, but that's easy.
For removal, the process is just reversed. It's handy to have a magnet attached to a string for retrieval of nuts and washers that leap out of my hands into the water under the whip plates. Doing this on a cold November day seems to make the small parts jump around a lot more actively. After the cable is reattached and the rest of the deck sections carted away, the winch hauls the "lifting ladder" up easily to perhaps 30 degrees above horizontal, at which point the "Y" cable from its end down to the dock frame goes tight. Then the cranking gets harder as the heavy frame comes up out of the water, to a point where the closest dock legs will stay comfortably above where the ice will be. The whole process is a lot easier now, compared to the ordeal of wrestling water-logged wood frames up over the embankment each fall.
As TiltonBB said, you can build your own deck sections yourself and save some labor cost. I did that for mine, using cedar for its light weight and natural rot resistance. I did a quick calculation on weight of other choices, and I found that pressure treated wood or composite decking would have nearly doubled the weight of each section.