Well, I’m not really selling it. As much as I would like to sell my boat hoist, I can’t justify the expense of a new one. I finally got it pulled out of the lake today. This is never a pleasant task, as the hoist is very heavy and unwieldy. Until today, I have had the good fortune to enlist the help of a few neighbors to assist me in either moving the lift into my dock space, or taking it out of the lake in the fall. Schedules are hard enough to coordinate, with fatherly duties (for me) and professional sports (for the neighbors) causing conflicts, and, my neighbors aren’t getting any younger. I could be in better shape, myself, but those guys have have at least another decade on me, and their aches and pains are a little more pronounced. I have managed to avoid serious injury and surgery on various joints through my positive mental attitude and clean living. OK, seriously, there are indications I may have knee joint and bursitis issues in my future, but I am doing well at the moment.
I am grateful to “Big Jim”, an associate at work who lives nearby, for helping me muscle the hoist up onto the beach (the house in the background is not mine, in case you’re wondering). Honestly, Jim did more muscling than I feel I did, though he begs to differ. We brought other means by which to move the hoist, namely some wheels which could be mounted on one end, but we found it just as easy to push it through the sand. The wheels were part of a system that would lift the hoist into the air so it could be rolled around, but it had fallen out of alignment last year when I was trying to haul the hoist out of the water and ended up very bent.
Yes, both the wheel system and I ended up bent. Smartass.
With the wheel lift system functional, two people can easily roll the hoist around, in and out of the water, and my life is less stressed. I am hoping the bent-up brackets can be fixed and improved by a master machinist up north, and I can worry less about scheduling three other sets of muscles (ideally) to move the beast hoist around.