Thursday, August 25, 2011

Knocked up

This is a common sight in many marinas. The "Steel Forks" of the lift snatch your boat out of the water, and place it onto a storage rack, or the ilk. The forks always end up generally in the same place, sort of, and that is the outboard edges of the hull, give or take. Running these machines takes practice, hopefully not too much on your boat, and a lot of skill. There are always signs around dry storage marinas that say something to the tune of, "Make sure your antennas are lowered, and the trim tabs are all the way up." Loosely translated, this means it ain't our fault if you end up with broken, or bent stuff on your boat, or any of the other possible variants such as "Tell it to the judge", "We told you so", and my favorite, "What, you can't read? So given the fact that these huge metal hydraulically operated prongs are going to snatch your boat from its undersides, why would you mount your transducer where the forks can knock them up?