Called my dad Thursday afternoon to review his weekend schedule and see if he was still good to help me with the console move/install. Said he could Saturday. My goal for Friday was to buy some wood and build a ramp to get the console from the garage into my truck. Friday came and went without me even leaving the house and aside from having a plan for a ramp I didn't make any effort to get it done.
I called my dad Saturday morning and said I think I'm going to postpone the big move because I didn't have a ramp. He suggested we go rent a small landscaping trailer at HD and he had a bunch of 1" and 4" conduit / pvc pipe to roll it up and into a trailer. Half hour later he was pulling into the driveway. My two little guys were at each other pretty good and my little guy decided he wanted to go with us. My dad mentioned at the dump in his town was a basketball hoop for free and my wife said what are you waiting for go get it. So we went to HD, hooked up to a trailer quickly and filled out paperwork in maybe 10 mins and were on our way. We went to the dump and picked up the basketball hoop, and a peg perego pedal front end loader was there too! double score LOL. My little guy slept the entire time, missed everything, but woke up to the bounties of the dump.
Backed the L/S trailer in unloaded the hoop and little ride on tractor, set up the conduits and pipe and rolled the whole console in like nothing. Drilled it right into the wood bed of the trailer and added some overkill straps to tie it down.
LOADED-UP-4-4-21.jpg
Next, pulled the cover off the boat which I had rigged up with a step ladder and ratchet straps to keep the snow and rain from turning it into a pond over the winter. tied down the main rigging, hooked a battery up with jumpers and tilted the motor up for travel, and backed my dad up to the hitch. I pushed the 7 pin adaptor into his plug and he turned his lights on to test the trailer lights and the adaptor instantly caught fire! I pulled that out and luckily he also had a 4 pin, which we tested with him at the lights on the truck in case that went up in flames too. I bought that adaptor last year and it worked great no issues but must have had a short in the 8" of wiring it has.
After adding a couple lbs of tire pressure to one of my trailer tires we were on our way to his construction site job where he had a loader.
PICKED.jpg
After picking it I measured from the ground to the bottom and checked it against the boat on the trailer. an inch and a half short, fck. Luckily 40ft behind the loader was some bit curbing with stone only on the back side which was our 6" ramp. Looped the boat around next to the curb and we got the console over the lowest side of the boat beam then backed the boat up over the rigging and fuel tank and lowered it into place, removed the straps, and pushed it to the marks I had set on the deck when I first purchased the console. After my dad parked the loader, he called out "It looks good" and I yelled back with a big smile "YES!"
I did end up setting almost all the screw locations because it looked centered from the side profile, and after picking it in the straps it didn't have any lean. we knew it was rear heavy but not enough for it to want to tip in the sling/under its own weight, and if anything the position it is in now is well centered in the hull weight-wise.
Still have a bunch of things to consider like will the shifter cables link up to the throttle body? can I move it backwards at all because I wanted to close the gap between the console and the leaning post original position? why did the trailer light adaptor burn up? How will it perform? Was there a full shipment of garmin transducers on that Suez canal ship? For now, I'm happy that it is in, really happy my operator watched my hand signals closely, and that I can almost feel the water under my feet. Next weekend splash? probably not realistic logistically, two weeks yes certainly attainable.
HOME-AGAIN-4-4-21.jpg
The rental time was 5 hours 15 min, most of that time was spent driving. $47 trailer rental vs. whatever wood costs nowadays.