Well, we finally go the hoist all finished,

Finished hoist

isn’t it pretty?  The marina did a good job on the installation but there were a few problems with it.  One of them was where the boom dropped the boat.  When it dropped the boat, it dropped it too far to the port so the boat barely fit on the cradle.  Gary figured out if the boom was raised an inch or so, it will raise the top of the boom by a foot or so which would drop the boat just where it needed to be.  So we took the lift cylinder

Lift cylinder

Close up of lift cylinder

and had that top hole drilled thru the cylinder so the pin could be placed in there. Apparently that was no easy task.  That cylinder is pretty thick.  When we picked up the finished product, the guy told us he had a tough time drilling thru it.  They did a nice job though.

Then we bought a stainless steel bolt to put in the bottom hole for extra support.  Wahla!  The boat is now able to be dropped where it fits perfectly on the cradle arms.

Ok, we are now almost there.  Now we just have to fix the fact that when the hoist swings out to drop the boat the winch hits the stainless steel railings for the seats on top.  Gary put on his thinking cap and came up with a solution.  He’d cut the railings off and make a swinging door so you could just open the door and the winch wouldn’t hit it anymore.  So how did he do that?

He started out by putting the railings back on

Put railings back on

Of course you want to make sure you goop them up good with 5100 so there are no leaks

Lots of goop means no leaks 🙂

Oops, I forgot to take a before picture of the railings, so here is a picture of the starboard side

Starboard side

Side note: I just took that picture today.  I pulled off the cushion so I could get a picture of the railings.  What do I see when I pulled off the cushions?

Coiled bumper lines

Even up where no one can see, Gary keeps things neat and orderly.  Holy Hoot!  He better not look in my kitchen drawers, he’d have a heart attack 🙂

Anyway, back to the story about the hoist…..he had to take official and precise measurements for cutting the railings

Measure twice, cut once

He cut the railings with a hack saw.  And of course the Touch of Class is well stocked with extra saw blades so it was like cutting thru butter with a knife :).  Then he had to cut them down because he was going to add some more hardware to form “T”s.  We then asked the marina if they could provide us with the up and down railings.  The did a really nice job, although we haven’t gotten the bill for that yet, Yikes!

And here is the finished product

Finished railing

It will swing open from the right side

See how it swings, and we don’t even have to take the cushion off!

It is good and sturdy so people can still lean against it and we don’t have to worry about it breaking.

So our hoist is finally all done.  The cost was what we expected.  Now we just have to go out and give it a try and have a little fun scooting around in the Litl Touch.