Crane?

[dman]

The area that I live in doesn`t have anything to offer for sailboats,all fishing.Last year I built a 30 ton hydraulic trailer to haul my own boat out and now I want to build some sort of crane to step masts and am looking for any ideas except comments about insurance or calling in a boom truck.I have hydraulic power and an electric winch available as well as a metal fabricating shop.Looking for simple or complex design ideas.Thanks.

[Jeff_H]

The traditional mast stepping crane is a set of ''sheer legs''. Sheer legs consist of a pair of spars joined at the top and spread wider at the bottom. This makes the crane stable at the bottom.

Jeff

[Silmaril]

There is also a device called a "Gin Pole" that can work well. It is used for raising the ridge beam on barns (ever wonder how they did that "back in the day").

Here is a link to one used for sailboats, pretty neat.

http://www.sailmaker.com/articles/step_rig/step_rig.htm

One word of caution, if you don''t watch what you are doing, all heck will break lose.

My marina had used a Gin Pole at the pit for masts, until some folks though it looked so easy that they tried to do it by themselves one Sunday. Result? Broken mast, Gin Pole, and about $30,000 damage to the boat near the pit that they dropped the whole rig on!