Trailering Tips

By Barney Harris

Last year alone TEAM SPOT drove 12,000 miles, most with three or more boats in tow – and all without a single incident of any damage to any boat. Here are some trailering tips from the mind of SPOT.

Fundamentals

I believe it is imperative to secure everything to the trailer to force it all to move as one. This increases the ratio of sprung to unsprung weight, a critical determinant of how well the trailer’s suspension will isolate the boats from road bumps.

Securing Boats and Gear to the Trailer

I am glad I do not have a neat story about how my boat flew off the trailer. In over 50,000 miles of trailering boats over the past 5 years TEAM SPOT has never lost a boat. This is no accident. The key is to perform the simple thought experiment: if the entire load can be lost as a result of the failure of a single tie down, then it is not adequately secured. An unfortunately common example is the boat’s bow tie down. Take a look at how your boat is secured to its trailer and ask yourself what would happen if the single line securing the bow became untied, chafed through, or failed for some other reason. The answer is not pleasant. SPOT always uses redundant means to secure boats to their trailer. You secure your trailer to your car with both a ball and socket AND chains, why would you do any less for your boat? Boats falling off trailers are 100% avoidable. Rule of thumb: keep adding tie down lines until you could deliberately cut any one line and not have a catastrophic failure.

Knots

This is rocket science: use knots which will not come undone. Good knots include bowline, trucker’s hitch, and multiple half hitches. Bad knots include slip knots, midshipman stopper, clove hitch (unless used with half hitches), and anything resembling a shoe lace knot.

Mast Preparation for Towing

Pull all halyards to the top of their travel. Coil the ends at the base. Remove the shrouds and forestay, coil them, and stow them in the boat. Preparing the mast in this way will reduce damage to the anodized outer surface from chafing.

Mast Base Protection

Spot uses an old jib bag slipped over the mast base. It keeps the sun off the halyards, reduces road grime, and chaffing. No need to tie it on, simply point the mast base end forward and it will stay on just fine, based on the last 50,000 miles of towing anyway.

Tying Down Masts

Here is a neat trick: first loosely wrap line around the mast to the supporting structure and then seize around it, locking the two together while forming a rope insulator between the mast and trailer. There are no cut bits of carpet to come loose; the tie down line itself serves to isolate and secure the mast to the trailer.

Tying Two Masts Together

Tie one end to one mast with a bowline. Then make several figure 8’s around both masts. Finish by seizing the lines between the masts. This serves to isolate the masts from each other, and lock them together, but leaves the way for a little scrubbing action which tends to dampening whipping and the fatigue it produces.

Mast Warning Flag

SPOT uses a single foam “noodle” from a toy store with reflective tape wrapped around it suspended from a short length of line. When driving down the road the reflective tape covered foam noodle floats several feet behind the trailer roughly at mast level. Truckers approaching from behind will first see a bright object oscillating vertically, and so reduces the probability of getting masts damaged from a rear ending incident. When parked, the reflective noodle hangs from the mast and serves to alert parking cars that there is something which they must go around. This reduces the probability that a person parking a car with a roof racked boat will collide with and possibly damage the masts.

Covers

Team spot uses a short length of shock cord in series with the cover tie down. By pre-loading the shock cord, the cover is held taught despite changes in humidity and temperature, and thus will shed rain. While trailering, the shock cord prevents flapping, since the breeze can not work the cover loose gradually while driving.

Trailering Upside Down

Place the bottom cover outside the top cover to prevent rain water from filling the top cover. Amusing lesson, I was car topping a boat upside down from Florida after midwinters one year, and dropped the whole thing off at the airport while I went on a business trip. When I returned a week later, it looked like I had a beached whale on top of my truck – the top cover, which was fit over the bottom cover, was completely full, rainwater having drained into it for over a week.

Spares

Team spot always travels with a spare hub and wheel with tire mounted. The hub has all bearings pressed in, seals, and is greased and ready to go, just remove the existing retaining nut, slam it on, and you are back on the road in under one hour.

Electrical Connections

It is incredible to me that trailer manufacturers actually use wire nuts in exposed trailer electrical systems. Wire nuts are not sealed, rely on the strength of stripped copper strands to remain intact, and are exposed to every bit of road salt through which the trailer is driven. I prefer to use the marine rated crimp on fittings with integral heat shrink tubing. Crimp them on and apply heat to shrink the plastic tube around the wire and seal the thermally activated adhesive. This forms a good fatigue resistant electrical and watertight mechanical connection.

Strain Relief and Chafing

Look in your car at how wiring is lead and supported. This is no accident – its supported almost over its entire length and there are no areas where the insulation chafes on a sharp corner or surface. Car manufacturers have learned that a wire bent around a sharp corner will eventually chafe through and go to ground with consequences which range from inconvenience to catastrophe. Trailer manufacturers as a group are not as far along the learning curve: their products are rife with chafe points and potential wear areas. Fix this by wrapping tape at all potential chafe points – and keep an eye on them.

Wheel Bearings

I heard a very telling comment by a naval ship deck machinery designer – “.winches are destroyed through neglect and improper maintenance long before they wear out.” The same applies to trailer wheel bearings. If you were to analyze the load supported by a trailer wheel bearing set and calculate its life it would be infinite for all practical purposes. Trailer wheel bearings are lightly loaded as bearings go. So why do they fail? Improper maintenance and abuse. Placing them under water is a prime example. Using bearing buddies or other similar products does help – but does not always prevent the water intrusion instrumental to their ultimate failure. This is simple stuff. Check the inner seals for leaks – if you see grease getting flung all over the wheel, get them repacked and the seal replaced. Keep wheel bearings the heck out of the water, period. Open and repack every couple years and you won’t have any problems. Keep an eye on them when on a long trip. Ideally they should be only a little above ambient air temperature – a little warmth is ok, but if the wheel bearings get so hot you can not hold your hand on them that means something is very wrong, stop and adjust / replace them.