Trailer for A25

[qboat]

I am hoping to buy an A25 cruiser (not motersailor) this spring, and will need to fit out a trailer suitable for over-the-road use. There are some useful posts here about adjusting trailer supports, but I would appreciate something more basic. I am assuming a 5-6k# trailer is sufficient. I am also supposing the keel can be supported on a center wide bunk board to the point where the skeg comes down, and that the skeg and the stern can then go unsupported behind the trailer. If someone has set this up, I would appreciate knowing how long a trailer I need to accomplish this (from the roller support in the front to the back of the frame). And then, and advice about support out to the chines, guide boards, etc. would help Thanks. Sam

[WillieC]

Plan on 6000 lbs for weight of boat, which includes fuel, water, provisions, hardtop, tools, spares...don't scrimp if you are planning on traveling, DAing.

We found some information suggesting 3500 lbs for the A25 as originally built. Maybe a stripped, naked, dry boat, but not for over-the-road.

[DesertAlbin736]

Greetings qboat! We've trailered our boat to Delaware once before in 2015, coming down through NJ and putting our rig on the Cape May-Lewes ferry en route to the Nanticoke River Marina in Blades where we launched there & ran the length of Nanticoke River to spend two weeks cruising between Solomons, Cambridge, Oxford, & St. Michaels plus up St. Leonards Creek. My late parents moved to Laurel in the '80s after they retired & I've made many trips out there to visit. My late step dad who passed in 2011 was a member of the Nanticoke River Yacht Club and before he died was nominated as an honorary commodore and his picture is up on the wall in the clubhouse to this day. In fact, when you find your boat you might want to look into joining the NRYC, and in fact maybe joining before you find your boat. Mention that you know Lee Simond's son. The club has probably changed some in the six years since I was last there, but they were a great bunch of down home folks & have weekly dinners at the clubhouse & often do runs downriver to Vienna, MD & back.

Here's the NRYC home page

https://nanticokeriveryc.wordpress.com/


Anyway, as far as trailers, ours is rated 6,000 lbs GVWR which is barely enough. I've had my boat & trailer weighed on a truck scale and it's just over 6,000 lbs, so at minimum I would suggest at least 6,000 lb GVWR with tandem axles and at least 15" load range E tires. You might be able to get away with less if you're thinking of strictly a yard trailer or short distance towing. Of course Delaware is flat as a pancake but out here in the West we run into long 6% mountain grades no matter where we go so having a strong tow vehicle and good trailer brakes is essential. The closest equivalent in the east is some of the long stretches on the interstates in western Maryland & W. Virginia.

Here's a photo of our trailer, seen here at an invasive species inspection checkpoint on I-84 in Oregon in 2019, our last long road trip. The keel is supported by rollers at each cross member up to where the keel tapers down and the bunks are adjustable. Note how long the trailer tongue is. Even on fairly steep ramps I have to back in to where the water's edge is even with the back edge of the driver's door to float off when launching & winching the bow up when hauling out. In dealing with salt water I'd also suggest disc brakes rather than drums.

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Here's a close up of the back end. I inherited this trailer from previous owners & pretty sure it was custom designed to fit the boat. You can see how the back end has a cutout to accommodate the drop keel. Best viewed on a desktop PC or large screen laptop. Click in the photo for enlarged view.

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Here's another shot of the trailer without the boat on it, taken when it was on blocks for a bottom job. In this instance the adjustable bunks were lowered to allow the trailer to be pulled out from under the boat, a feature that came in handy in that case. To put the boat back on the trailer the bow was supported by H beam chain hoist and the stern suppoted by a forklift. Block were removed one by one as the trailer was rolled back in place, then the boat lowered to rest on the keel rollers while still supported by the chain hoist and forklift & the bunks were raised with a floor jack to fit the curve of the hull & the set screw bolts tightened. You would do well to come up with something similar, either with bunks or roller "bogies".

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Here's another from Google Maps street view of our trailer at Blaine Harbor launch ramp in Blaine, WA in 2019, which can still be seen on Google Maps.

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Meanwhile for your entertainment fast forward to the 12:53 mark on this video for our Nanticoke River & Chesapeake cruising.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67QqvVgwgz8&t=611sse

[qboat]

Tried to post this earlier but must have done something wrong. Thanks for the advice--sounds like 6k is the minimum for the trailer. DesertAlbin, the pictures were super helpful, and the video was great--what a trip! That is my dream with the A-25, covering different cruising grounds by trailering. I am familiar with the marina in Blades--I will check out the club. The Nanticoke is a beautiful river. Thanks again both.

[LopezMike]

My boat and trailer scale in at just over 6K. It is a dual axle Easyloader with torsion bar suspension and electric brakes. I tow it with an old Ford E250 class B motorhome. Except for wishing I had a lower rear end ratio for ramp retrievals I have no complaints. I drive at 55.

One small problem with a dual axles is that getting the tongue weight right is not totally simple. You have to do your measuring on flat ground. You can disconnect my trailer from the van and when the hitch is lowered to the ground the tongue weight is so light that you can lift it up a little by hand. But on level ground there is no way to muscle it off of the ball.

Hitch goes down, front axle takes more weight. Hitch goes up, rear axle takes more of the load. Just a fact of life.

[Bob Noodat]

Adequate tongue weight is safety-critical. It should be around 10% of your laden trailer weight. About 600 to 650 lbs for an A25. If you can lift your trailer hitch off the ball when the boat is on it, then either I would not like to get into a tavern brawl with you, or you have a dangerous towing situation. It is your tongue jack that is there to provide the several hundredweight of lift that you should need in order to lift the hitch off the ball.

Too low a tongue weight makes for a swaying trailer that goes out of control easily. A heavy motor home is a great tow vehicle for a heavy trailer, in that the weight gives you a greater margin of error, but the same laws of physics apply: a light-tongued trailer is not acting as part of your rear axle, therefore is essentially pursuing its own trajectory with the tow vehicle continually pulling it back into line. This is not safe.

[DesertAlbin736]

The Nanticoke is a beautiful river. Thanks again both. I am familiar with the marina in Blades--I will check out the club.

Don't forget to mention that Lee Simonds' son Steve sent you. Say hi to Alan Johnson if you meet him. This is my stepdad with me at the yacht club on the occasion of him being appointed honorary commodore almost one month to the day before he passed way from cancer at age 90. That was ten years ago this year. It was always funny to see the two of us together, I'm almost a head taller than he was. Still miss him a lot. Back in 2002 when I trailered my Montgomery sailboat back to Delaware he flew out to Phoenix and we rode back across the country together. Those four days was the longest time he'd been apart from my mother in 40 years. She was very ill at the time and passed away six months later. We camped in the boat at RV parks & shared the tiny boat cabin which was just the V berth and a tiny footwell. Passing the DC area we made a wrong turn and ended up on the DC Beltway at rush our. That was fun towing a trailer through that traffic. That boat + trailer weighed all of 1,500 lbs. At the time my tow vehicle was a GMC Safari minivan. I have some print pictures of that but they're in an album and not digitized into the computer.

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View motoring down Nanticoke River passing to the south the Woodland ferry landing on the west side of the river.

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Too low a tongue weight makes for a swaying trailer that goes out of control easily.

I have seen that happen before. Back in 2003 when I had my Montgomery 15 sailboat a group of us from the Lake Pleasant Sailing club were trailering our boats on the 400 mile trip across I-10 from Phoenix on the way to Marina Del Rey in Los Angeles for a crossing to Catalina Island when one of our members had an O'Day 25 on its trailer improperly balanced with too much weigh aft or not placed far enough forward on the trailer resulting in not enough tongue weight. The trip across the desert is mostly relatively flat ground except when crossing some of the Kofa mountain range on the Arizona side near Quartzite and the long slope over the 4,000 ft Chiriaco Summit south of the Joshua Tree National Monument in California. One of the group was running at 70 MPH and this other guy was trying to keep up. This was an overnight run. His trailer started swaying and he lost control and flipped the rig down an embankment. No one got hurt thankfully. One cannot be too conscientious on all the things needed to be paid attention to on trailering safely from regular maintenance of hubs, brakes, bearings, tires and especially properly balancing the trailer's tongue weight. Not fun seeing your boat lying on its side on the highway. Not only inadequate tongue weight but a blown tire can also be serious business. At least unlike an RV travel trailer you can see your wheels in the rear view mirror and have some warning when something goes wrong besides a driver pulling up alongside waving at you and pointing at your rig.

[Bob Noodat]

Great picture of your stepdad, DA. He looks great for his age, amazing to think he died so soon after that. Looks as if he kept all his marbles to the end though.

[DesertAlbin736]

Yes he did. What you don't see in that picture was by then he was reduced to using one of those wheeled walkers that you can sit on & be wheeled around. Great genes ran in his family. Renal cell carcinoma did him in a few weeks short of his 91st birthday. He was always the life of the party at the yacht club. When they had live bands & dancing at the club he would dance with all the wives whose husbands didn't want to dance. He loved to flirt with younger women but was harmless & a gentleman, never vulgar. He was not wealthy and didn't own a boat. But his was a life well lived, including being a WW2 Navy vet. I spent a month from that mid September to mid October staying with him helping take care of him which was totally exhausting. Otherwise he probably would have made it past 95 easily. He had an older sister who lived to be 103.

Sorry to veer so off topic but hearing from someone in Delaware brings back a lot of memories.

[qboat]

DA, I will definately mention you and your stepdad, thanks. As to tongue weight, I know how to measure it, but it would give me a head start setting up a trailer if someone can tell me where the center of your two axles is. I know every boat will be loaded differently, but this would definately be a leg up. The measurement I need is from the bow (actually a plumb line dropped from the bow) back to the center of your axles. If anybody has that handy, I would greatly appreciate it. Sam

[DesertAlbin736]

Sam if you're still just "looking for one" be prepared to extend your search far from home, perhaps as far away as Florida. These boats are quite rare in the US, more so than in Canada.

Here's a side on view of boat on trailer. You should be able to scale from the picture taking into account the overall length of the trailer & how far out the tongue extends. The midpoint of the axles is just aft of the engine location, the engine being the heaviest item in the boat. That's about 17ft back from the bow. In this case the hitch is around 7.5 to 8 ft ahead of the bow making the overall length of the trailer about 34 ft. Variations in tongue length could affect that placement. A professional trailer shop experienced with boat trailers should be able to help advise. Putting it on the Cape May-Lewes ferry cost $84, charged by the foot for oversize vehicles with the truck being about 20 ft. Obviously would have had a tougher time with a wider beam boat.

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Could have been cheaper to drive the long way down from Barnegat & Manahawkin NJ where my half brother lives via the Turnpike & Delaware Memorial bridge but we thought the ferry would be much more fun.

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I hope we do get to do this year's Big Cruise from Tonawanda NY to Blades, DE this year. If so we'll have to get in touch. ETA is sometime around Labor Day or later, hopefully with no hurricanes. That will be about +/- 800 miles by water via Erie Canal, Hudson River, Jersey Coast, C&D Canal, so at least a month to six weeks from mid August departure when we expect to meet up with our friends when they arrive at Tonawanda with their sailboat sailing from upper Wisconsin on Lake Superior. Should be fun!

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PS, last I heard the NRYC clubhouse is only open for Wednesday night happy hour & Friday night dinners. With COVID may be less times open. You'll have to call or email the website to check before driving over from Lewes.

[dkirsop]

The engine should be centred over your axles. If you can, find a boat that already has a trailer as this will be your most affordable option. Best of luck in your search.

[qboat]

I am considering a nice 25 with no trailer relatively locally. That is what has prompted this flurry of interest. DA, that boat looks like I mighty tight fit on the Cape May/Lewes Ferry!

[Burton]

We bought a 25 with no trailer. Thankfully, I found one with a GVW of 6800 pounds for $1500. Even though we are pretty much in boat heaven up here in coastal Maine, this was the only trailer of the size I found for sale in about a year of looking. What follows is what we found about set up. We did as one commented, we centered the engine over the dual axles and the tongue weight came out perfect. In our haste to get launched, we did not have double rollers on every crossmember. Even though I bought type 316 stainless steel for the keel roller axles, the back one bent. The issue is that a whole lot of weight can be on one roller at one given moment when launching or retrieving. We purchased poly rollers and there is a huge difference in quality. Some are solid, and some simply have inserts on the ends for the axles and are hollow in the middle.. Beware of the cheapies! The center flat section on the rollers
was not wide enough for the keel, so I chucked them in our lathe and turned the flats wider.
Instead of carpet for the bunks we used special plastic sections designed for boat bunks and the boat slides off easily— and we can pretty much power it nearly all the way on going very slow for hauling out. If you still need that measurement let me know.

[DesertAlbin736]

Seems to me I recall seeing this boat advertised for sale somewhere near Delaware in 2015. This isn't the boat you're looking at by chance? Seen here on the kind of trailer that would be the ideal setup. Had a bitchin' set of dinghy davits. It's an early 6.5 knot model but would be a good boat if it is the one you're looking at. Not sure whatever happened to it.

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