I saw last week that Duckworks has a new item; inflatable 9"x60" beach roller. I think it is rated for 2000#. I'm planning to get one, or two, for my dory. They show one hanging on the side of the hull which would serve as a fender and additional floatation.  Barry

   This is, I think, what Barry is talking about.

http://www.duckworksbbs.com/gear/beachroller/index.htm

   You might also consider a dolly with beach wheels - Sietech and others make a plethora of them. Or you could biuld your own. We launch small boats like Snipes (380lbs) 420s ans FJs (250lbs) with dollys. Would depend a bit on the transition of the grass to mud. The NE dory at 100lbs should be easy with a dolly with the right wheels.

Joel

I have a dolly and it's a pain to get it on and strapped in..always coming off, let alone pulling on it thru a grassy shoreline.  I too saw the roller tubes at Duckworks and thought how much easier that would be...just put one down in front of the boat, pull the boat up on it, balance on it pull some, then lay down a second one in front of the boat...seems pretty simple. 

Also, you can tell from the paint worn off my dory skeg that I did NOT do something protective when I pulled my dory up on a mud/sand/grassy shore line all last summer..but I did have two pieces of old indoor outdoor carpet I put half in the water and half out, but as sand washed onto the carpet it rubbed on the skeg anyway.

A fully loaded dory with rudder, daggerboard,  oars and sail rig (I'm guessing) must weigh into the 250# area but even so, it's real easy to pull it up without a line, by getting a running start walking in the water holding onto the breasthook..but again, even loaded I bet the beach rollers would work great.   

 Has anyone used the rollers?

Hey Joel...what kind of dollys do you use?

Hello Curt,

Those Duckworks inflatable rollers look nice and should fit the bill nicely. Somewhere I have a very old picture of my Great Uncle pulling a 35 foot Chesapeake Dead Rise with a four up hitch of Percherons on log rollers down a gravel road to a launch area at low tide. . . A simple concept that has worked for millennia moving heavy objects.

As for dollies, in my younger days in the mid 70’s I was sailing a Laser (#461) competitively and had no help to launch on non race days. As I recall the Laser weighed around 150 pounds rigged and because I only weighed about 80 or 90 pounds at the time I had a difficult time launching on my own. My Father built a single axle dolly out of square stock and mounted two lawn tractor tires off of the back axle an old Snapper riding mower. He then crafted a mock dagger board out of Red Oak and mounted it to the dolly axle to be inserted in the dagger board trunk from underneath the boat. The dolly dagger board was just long enough to enter the trunk six  inches or so.  Once rigged with the dolly I could push down on the bow to a balance point and head for the water. At the water’s edge I would push her until the stern was buoyant enough that I could lift the bow off the dolly which would pop up to the surface on one side or the other. When I was tired, or if the water deep enough I could also force it out by inserting my dagger board pushing it out through the bottom.

I’m not sure how stout your dagger board trunk is on your Dory but you might want to consider that option.  Or you could buy a small Donkey and pull it on some logs. . . They have lots of Donkeys in Texas don’t they?

JP

���DaveJ, Look up water tribe, everglades challenge web site or utube. They use rollers to launch the bigger boats on this ultra quest.

   We use Sietech Dollys. Although there are competing ones that are as good. For yachts larger than lasers and sunfish, the double tongue versions work the best.

I have also built dollies out of wood, not that hard. triangle of 2x4s with substantial plywood corner pieces. base 2x4 is the axel - drill and epoxy short metal rod axels into the ends of that 2x4 for the wheels. verticle 2x4 in front, again with substantial plywood gussets and heavy dowel for a handle. then make the appropriate bunkers for your yacht. paint and use untill it falls apart, then make a better one!

I have always found dolly solutions that stick into the CD trunk to be awkward for getting the boat on and off.

   Thank you all for your suggestions. I think to start with I'll fry those long yellow rollers. The standard short fenders would seem to be less forgiving of less than perfect straight line hauling. I do have a small Seitech dolly which works fine for a smaller boat such as my 7'7" Nutshell. But a weighter, longer boat would bog it down in the mud part of the equation.

Here is the youtube for the Watertribe moving boats into the water with the rollers you describe. Go to minute 6:53 on the bar. As you can see they move some relatively big boats. But then again there is a lot of people power at the begining of the challenge. Things always seem heavier at the end of a paddle, row, sail, etc.

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6tLgJX9niM