[PCW] mono vs. cat

[Candy Chapman and Gary Bell]

Grahame Shannon said:

The PDQ 34 would have been more popular on the Left Coast were it not
for a beam too wide for road transport.

REPLY:
In Sept-Oct 2002 I cruised my PDQ 34 from the factory across the Great Lakes
to the Palmer Johnson yards at Sturgeon Bay, WI.  It was then loaded on a
special trailer and hauled to Portland, OR.  True, it was a specially tweaked
low-boy trailer, and the hauler has since gone out of business (he died of
illness, honest).  True, I had to remove and replace the flybridge (the
factory built mine specially for that).  True, it took special permitting,
different for each state, due to its 16' 10" beam.  True, nobody else has done
long haul transport of PDQ or similar cats, before or since so far as I know.
However, it worked fine, took a small fraction of the transit time required
for Dockwise or equivalent, and I saved 30-50% of the cost of ship transport.
I feel strongly that while there are hurdles and barriers to land hauling, it
is quite possible, and that intellectual inertia and lack of a clearly seen
precedent are the chief problems.

Cheers,
Gary Bell