Taking out the Lift as Late as Possible
As it goes most often in the fall, I am one of the last to take our water toys, dock, and boat lift out of the water. I have a flexible schedule so I like to take advantage of that and extend the fall fishing season as long as possible. When it come to taking out the dock and the lift, the timing is usually dependent on when I can get some help. This year I took out the dock myself, but this article is about taking out the lift, something I haven’t attempted solo, including this year, when a son and I did it. So it’s time for taking out the boat lift.
We do it a bit differently than our neighbours on either side. I guess they are a little smarter. Our neighbours to the East have wheels on everything and just pull out the lift then the dock with a winch on a quad. Our neighbours to the West use farmer ingenuity which includes 4 barrels which they leave strapped to the lift then pump full of water to float the lift and easily pull up on shore. We resort to horse power.
Using a single pulley strapped to a tree, we run a couple of 1/2″ ropes from a harness strapped to the lift up the hill to a trailer hitch ball on a vehicle. The pulley is necessary as we do not have a direct line to the lift.
On the 2nd rope, the one looped onto the trailer hitch, we have tied a few extra loops. As we begin pulling, the vehicle moves up the hill and we take the stretch out of the ropes. Several times during the pull, we need to back up and hitch on again to continue the pull, without blocking the road at the top of the hill.
During the pull, the front of the lift rides on wheels while the back of the lift drags the leveling legs through the mud. Hence the need for horse power. Once we have the lift mostly out of the water, we raise the back of the lift, unpin the legs, and raise them above the back wheels. Then we use the shortest loop, pull the lift further up the lift, and push it into it’s winter parking spot.
