Boat Lift Recomendations?

[ericinmich]

The only issue with Airdock I heard (read) about is of someones boat that sunk because one bag deflated, boat listed/slid enough to start taking on water, it went south from there.

But problems can occur with any lift. A buddies hydraulic lift had a ram let go while his Tige was on it (he was 4 hours away) and a neighbor called him and he got there before any major waves damaged anything. And I know of two lifts using the older cable & lever arms had the cable break. Luckily it was while raising the boat and not while the boat was unattended.

[IDBoating]

The only issue with Airdock I heard (read) about is of someones boat that sunk because one bag deflated, boat listed/slid enough to start taking on water, it went south from there.

Don't overinflate the sacs and raise the hull too high. It only has to be an inch or so out of the water. If a sac fails, the boat won't be so high that it will tip too far.

BTW, selective filling of sacs is another handy advantage of the AirDock. When Ewok (here on this site) had a plumbing problem and needed to quickly drain the water out of his hull, we pulled our 24Ve off the AirDock, put his RZ2 on it, inflated the rear sacs just enough to get the hull plug above water, and then overfilled the front sac to really jack up the bow. Result: The RZ2 was on a strong angle and the water just drained right out. Very handy. Saved him racing to the public dock, grabbing the trailer, loading up the boat, etc. We had things under control in five minutes.

You could do the reverse to swap props too, without taking the boat off the water. Since there are no bunks to (mis)adjust, it works with basically any boat.