Improvise a front bumper for Old Shore Station boat lift

[swbca]

When I bought a 2004 ProStar 3 years ago I replaced all the mechanical parts and the canopy on a 30 year old Shorestation lift with Straight Crossbeams.  This old lift came with the house.

It has no front limiter to stop the boat so it requires great-care by an experienced person to land the boat without the prop hitting the rear horizontal beam . . . . and then hope the engine doesn't kill when pulling in.

Has anyone seen a way to add a "bumper"  to limit the boat position on this type of lift ? 

A simple but probably bad idea is to bolt a piece of laminated wood to the front horizontal beam that would catch the front fin before the prop hits the rear beam.

( its not possible to raise the bed enough to have the prop clear the rear horizontal beam)  Our dock is 70 feet long and the lift would have to be 100 feet from shore to get enough water depth to raise the bed enough to solve this problem.

Edited August 30, 2023 by swbca

[BraceMaker]

Skip the laminated wood - we've always just done this with PVC pipe across the lift cradle using a U bolt.  ours is 3" has enough give that if you come in a smidge hot it isn't a hard stop. But is stiff enough to prevent too much forward motion.

 

[DW]

My Shoremaster lift has a rubber bumper on the rear prop stop crossbar so at least no metal to metal contact.  I have a cross dock across the front that also acts as a nose bumper to keep the prop from bumping anything.  A piece of Hydroturf / SeaDek or similar where the nose would hit acts as a soft landing.

[Mastercrafter]

Vertical poles mounted to the front (and back) of the lift cradle work great to both stop the boat from going too far forward, and keep it centered on the cradle.I fabricated mine but Storestation sells them too. 

Or go with the tried and true Shorestation foam bumpers. 

Lousy pics, sorry. 

 

 

 

[swbca]

1 hour ago, BraceMaker said:

Skip the laminated wood - we've always just done this with PVC pipe across the lift cradle using a U bolt.  ours is 3" has enough give that if you come in a smidge hot it isn't a hard stop. But is stiff enough to prevent too much forward motion.

 

I assume the front fin contacts the PC ?

[BraceMaker]

Correct but the PVC can bend pretty easily so its not a hard hit.

We don't power into it, but as you come onto the lift eventually you bump it and then crank up.  

Its a lot better to bump a fin than hit the prop into the lift.

[swbca]

 

 

@BraceMaker   Because of chronic shallow water problems and almost ZERO slope as we move further from shore, our Bed is a low as it can be on the lift, so the keel clears the front cross member only by 2".   As an alternative what about fastening the 3" PVC to the vertical bed supports so the PVC just clears the keel.   The 2 vertical supports are about 3 feet apart so it would be a stiffer hit.  The boat would stop with about 10" clearance between prop and rear cradle member. 

Edited August 30, 2023 by swbca

[skimtb]

Do you really need a positive stop?   Can you use a visual?   Like the backrest of the spotter seat lines of with the lift corner post?   Or even out a piece of tape on the hull or window frame to line up with lift corner post if you need to?  
 

[swbca]

@skimtbYES.  For three years I have been the only person to drive our boat into the lift because I don't want a damaged prop.  My wife has become a good slalom driver, but can't judge when the boat is exactly stopped when landing at a dock.  She doesn't leave it in reverse long enough or too long after 100's of landings.  I manually position the boat in the boat lift using visual markers, but sometimes strong wind conditions make it difficult.  If other people were landing our boat in the lift, I am certain there would have been contact between the prop and the lift.

[swbca]

@BraceMaker  Thanks for your input.  Because our bed has to be so low to deal with shallow water, there is no room for a 3" PVC mounted on top of the cradle.  The prop is 7" from the rear cradle cross member when the front fin hits this 4x4 bumper.  The keel of the boat clears the 4x4 by 1/8".

This solution doesn't have any flexibility like a 7 foot long piece of PVC but the lift itself is low mass and flexible if the boat is only going slightly too fast.  I had the 4x4 and lag bolts on hand so this is what fits and it works.     (It was easier to photoshop than take a picture this rainy morning.)

Thanks

Edited August 31, 2023 by swbca

[BraceMaker]

@swbca

Actually what you've done replicates where I got the idea originally my neighbor has a 4x4 with a keel roller bolted to it.  

Just one of these and he adjusted it up so it basically touches the keel and hits the skeg at the same time.

I would have stolen it but on my lift the front of the bunk isn't that close to my front skeg so I needed something that would need to come back over a foot to hit the front skeg before my prop hits.

[swbca]

@BraceMakerAdding this comment in the event someone uses this thread for a reference while adding a 4x4 wood bumper like illustrated in the post above.

Since adding the 4x4 bumper I found that having the lift slightly twisted, such as 2 inch low on one corner , can cause the front of the boat to shift left or right a few inches as it is lifted out of water.  It slides on the front of the two bunks to find its happy position.  This would conflict with the keel roller shown above.   I don't have the keel roller and my boat lift is twisted 2" after several moves to find deeper water in a draught this summer.  The boat shifts about 3' right of center even though the bunks are exactly left/right symmetrical on the cradle.   The feet height adjustments on the lift don't always let you get a perfectly level lift without  removing sand under some of the feet.