T&T: Over the road yacht transport

[Candy Chapman and Gary Bell]

I would like to talk off list to anyone who has experience with moving a
good sized trawler over the road to get your impressions of how it
worked out.  I am thinking of something with a mid forties length and a
14 foot beam weighing in at 45 to 50 thousand pounds.   Thanks!
 
Jim Laudermilch


Jim:

You didn't say where to and where from, nor how quickly you need the 
deed done. 

You should have little trouble with the beam, and almost no problem with 
the length or weight.  You've seen them move 14 foot wide modular homes 
on the roads all the time.  Height will be your biggest headache, unless 
you are going a very short haul and can bypass all the highway 
overpasses and overhead wires, rather like moving a house. 

We had our PDQ34 hauled from Sturgeon Bay Wisconsin to Portland Oregon 
by truck.  Length and weight (8 tons) were no sweat.  Width, at 16 feet 
10 inches was a big deal, as at least one state required a special 
meeting of the superload committee to let us pass.  Schedule delay of 
two weeks prompted us to bypass that state -- worked out OK.  Height was 
the real killer.  I had the factory modify the flying bridge so I could 
dismount and remount it for the trip, and at that we just made sixteen 
feet high on the lowboy trailer with the rudders/props/skegs seeeming to 
be about six inches from the pavement.  Putting the flybridge back on, 
rewiring, and refilling the hydraulic steering were a genuine pain in 
the grommet! 

The alternative was to run on the boat's bottom all around through the 
canal from Toronto Canada to Portland Oregon, or a similar Dockwise 
trip.  I think we paid something like 11 BU for the trucking, plus some 
for the launch (I did the recommission).  I don't have the numbers handy 
but it seems to me that Dockwise was about three times that.  Friends 
who had a PDQ delivered by Dockwise to Vancouver BC were very pleased 
with their experience.  I think back and wish I had driven the boat 
around myself, and if in that spot again I'm sure I would, but I'm 
retired and can make the time work out.