Preparing to Move the Schooner Hull

|Peter Johnson
Preparing to move the schooner hull

Part 1 of 6 in the Moving the Schooner Hull series.

Before we could turn our 38-foot schooner hull, we first had to build the rig to move it — a custom rolling frame and a 16-tonne moving dolly.

Building the moving rig

We've started preparing to move the 38-foot schooner hull out of the workshop.

So far we've made part of the rolling frame, which will be used together with a crane to turn the hull 180 degrees. We've also started on the moving dolly that will carry the boat.

The dolly consists of two 6-metre-long caterpillar tracks, with 10 wheels on each — a total weight allowance of 16 tonnes.

One of the axles for the moving caterpillar dolly

One of the 20 axles waiting for its wheel on the moving caterpillar
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.