We cruised close to 100,000 miles with Labrador retrievers on boats in size from the C Dory 22 to the 62foot Ketch, we sailed to Europe and back. This included 6 trips to Alaska both in our Cal 46 and a C Dory 22 & 25, Toward the end with several of our labs we faced similar issues. We made a dog elevator (but also used a dog sling). The hoist was everything from a spinnaker halyard which lowered the 70# lab to the ground when on the hard, working on the boat, to up 30 feet when moored along side a commercial wharf for big ships. This we just used a double reinforced Sunbrella sling. "Suzie" just walked onto the laid out fabric, and we gathered up the corners, tied them together and left a loop for the spinnaker halyard shackle.
For our English labs we made a 1/2" plywood base for the "elevator"--it was sized by the outline of the lab laying down. We had made sides of Sunbrella, stapled to the bottom of the board. We also screwed a couple of cleats on the bottom, overlapping the sunbrella to be sure it was secure. We criss crossed nylon straps from corner to corner, like in a boasin's chair and they came together, in a 2" diameter SS ring. One side of the sunbrella was left open, with velcro for closure where the dog walked in. The sides of sunbrella kept the dog in place, and were tacked (sewn) to the lifting straps. We had a loose pad, which was the size of the dog's platform for her to lay on. We had a "Ring" which the winch lifting hook fit into. We used that rig on a 42' Symbol aft cabin MY, which had a ladder from the "sundeck" down to the swim platform. We would launch the dinghy, usually across the stern, but could be the side. After the dinghy was secure, the "dog elevator" was brought to the same level as the top of the ladder/sundeck. The dog walked onto the "elevator" platform, and laid down. The crane davit lowered her into the boat. Next dog's turn (we had 2 labs then). Reverse to load back aboard. In that case we had a 1200 lb capacity crane davit to handle our 12' Aluminum skiff. On the C Dory we used a similar arrangement, but substituting the Garhauer davit (the larger of the two available) and had two mounting positions. One was on the side deck and would be used to bring the 9 1/2' Air Floor (68#) inflatable dinghy in and out of the water to the cabin top. The second position would be a corner of the cockpit. That was used to put the outboard on the dinghy, or move a full freezer chest (over 100#) from the ground or dock into the boat on the trailer, or moored at a dock. We also used this same elevator on both a CDory 22 and a CDory 25 from the cockpit floor to a dock or to the ground if we were on the trailer.(Boaterhoming).
This is a sub album on the Thataway photos dealing with the Garhauer Davit
If you have any issues, please send me an e-mail or Private message and I can go over details.
