Moving The Hull Part 2

|Peter Johnson
Moving the schooner hull out of the workshop, part 2

Part 3 of 6 in the Moving the Schooner Hull series.  Start at part 1 →

Once we had our roadway down and had formed a level plane, we needed to jack the boat up off the floor and support it on our two caterpillars.

jacking the boat up onto the caterpillarscaterpillar trolley in place under the schooner hull

Once the build frame was supported on the caterpillars, we could think about pulling her out of the workshop for the first time. That meant using the winch on the front of the Range Rover with a two-part purchase. I still wasn't convinced it would move.

We moved her two inches on the first day, just to prove to myself it would indeed move.

steel plate roadway close uphull moving 2 inches out of the workshop

Once we had the winch wire rigged, it was time to see if we could move her out.

hull edging out on the roadwaywinch wire rigged ready to pull the hull out

Slowly, and I mean very slowly, we winched her out into the sunshine.

winching the hull towards the doorshull edging towards the workshop doorswinching slowly out into the sunshinehull emerging from the workshop

Then, there we were, outside. I wasn't entirely sure how I felt at that point: a couple of old boys and a small winch, and we'd moved her without injuring anyone.

hull almost fully out of the workshophull out in the open for the first timehull fully outside the workshop

What we learned: have plenty of bottle jacks on hand. We had six, each rated at 12 tonnes.

Watch the hull coming out of the workshop on YouTube.
Peter Johnson

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Peter Johnson

Pete Johnson is the owner of Epoxy Ltd, trading since the late 1990s and supplying MAS epoxy and boatbuilding materials to professional and DIY builders alike, all under the philosophy of "Simple Perfection". When he's not helping customers, he's usually elbow-deep in one of his own projects, from building the 38ft schooner Iracunda from scratch to restoring boats like Junior, a 1950s Yachting Monthly dinghy rescued from the scrap heap. He writes the workshop blog to share the practical, often hard-won lessons learned building and repairing boats with epoxy.