A pair of beach rollers from Duckworks works well for me. I found a hand pump for less than 10 bucks that inflates them in about a minute so storage is easy. I just stop where the dory is afloat and pull it onto the first roller and on up the shore till the second roller goes under the boat allowing me to pull it farther. Don't pull too far; I stop when the roller is about 2/3 of the way to the stern.  Repeat as needed.  

A small trailer takes the wear and tear out of concrete boat ramps. It also lets you leave the boat pretty much ready to go, instead of having to deal with loading/unloading and lifting/taking off for cartopping. Instead, you just hook up the trailer, arrive at the ramp, take off the cover, step the mast and go. Even faster if you're just rowing.

Of course, the trailer costs money, parking it usually costs more than parking a cartopping vehicle and it's one more thing for the state to tax. So there's a definite trade-off. But no more scraped bottoms.

Laszlo

Hello Mike,  Sorry that my suggestion of KeelEasy did not work for your application.  It has held up well for me launching/recovering on concrete ramps, but I never drag the boats on the concrete.  I mostly use a C-Tug cart to roll the boat into/out of the water and just set it on the ramp.

I do not have any knowledge regarding copper bottoms, but I know that copper is rather soft and suspect that sharp rocks will tear it.  Better choices may be to run either a stainless steel runner or sacrificial hardwood skid down the keel you your boat.    

As another alternative, you could cover the high wear area of your boat with 1-2 more layers of glass, then paint the entire bottom with Wearlon Wetlander.  It is an airboat coating that is supposed to be very tough and low friction.  I have not used it but a friend has.  I will be using it on my Goat Island Skiff which is about 2/3 done.

Lastly, I have removed some KeelEazy.  It comes off easily with a heat gun.

Good Luck   

   Hi

Thanks for the suggestions guys. You all have helped me a ton with learning about using my Dory. I would love to buy a trailer. Not going to happen this season. I will always need the ability to cartop my Dory when I am dragging my travel trailer along. But when it's just the boat, a trailer would be nice. I have a beach cart that I use for launching and retrieving my boat. But I still have to beach the boat to go get the cart. My favorite lake doesn't have a place to the up to. Also the stupid wheels on the cart float so much I nearly always smack the skeg on the ground getting it on the cart:). That wetland paint looks very promising, I have sent the manufacturer some questions to see if it will hold up to concrete. 

Speaking of trailers, has anyone used the Harbour Freight trailer? I might be able to afford one of them....next season.

I was on a very tight budget when I built my Skerry, and car-topping was out of the question for a 70+ year old who often goes out alone, so I bought an HF trailer and one of the Davis carts that CLC used to sell but are no longer in production.  My observations about the trailer are as follows:

The trailer is very basic – no winch, cheap lights that needed some fiddling to make them work, and just two short bunks that the boat sits on but that do not really cradle the boat. Accordingly, the boat is not very stable until I've tied the painter snugly to the post where a winch would mount and it's been strapped down with a couple of ratchet straps that pass under the trailer and through the forward and midships oarlocks.  I could probably buy additional aftermarket parts to remedy the instability (at some place other than HF), but that gets costly pretty fast.

The Skerry is a double ender, and a boat with a conventional transom would probably allow the bunks to be spread farther apart for better stability.  I believe I recall that HF claims the trailer is intended for boats up  to 14 feet.  The Skerry is 15 feet, but the NE Dory is 17 feet, and would hang off the back pretty far.  Might be OK, but I'm not sure. I would probably hang a red flag off the back.  CLC claims the weight difference is only 5 lb, which should not be an issue.

Changes I've made:  The trailer is steel, so it's pretty heavy.  I've added a trailer jack and bought a trailer dolly from HF to facilitate moving it around and hooking up to the car, bought a spare tire and spare tire mount, also from HF (already had one flat because of a tire stem failure), replaced the hourglass shaped roller that the bow nestles into with a vee that better keeps it in place, and added another keel roller farther forward on the trailer.

I've adopted the practice of sliding the boat off the trailer onto the Davis cart, wheeling it down to the water, and launching off to the side of the ramp.  I reverse the process to haul out.  I avoid traffic jams at the ramp and take all the time I want to step the mast, sort the rigging, hang the rudder, answer questions from folks admiring the boat, etc.  I replaced the pneumatic wheels on the cart with wheelbarrow wheels that have solid rubber tires, which has greatly relieved the flotation problem.

Bottom line:  The HF trailer can be made to work but you can expect some additional costs and it may never be truly satisfactory.  If I were doing it over again, I'd look for a used trailer first.

hokker

  I thought I would update everyone on this issue. I remembered a post I had read before I purchased my kit. Someone had put cording on the bow and skeg. I have given that a try. I took 1/4" cord on the bow and 3 /4" on the skeg. I first sanded through the paint to clean epoxy. Than I soaked the cord in epoxy and mounted it to my Dory. I have been out twice since this upgrade and it is working great! The cord is showing no signs of damage from contacting the cement ramp.