Mounting a Winch in a Boat House to Pull a Boat Up a Launch Ramp

Question:

I recently built a 30foot x 36foot boathouse along the shoreline of my lakehouse. I had the contractor pour a concrete boat ramp from the garage door directly into the water. The approximate angle of the boat ramp is 25 to 30 degrees. About 10foot of the boat ramp slab is submerged in water. From the garage door to the waterline is about six feet. What I would like to do is build a winch system to store and launch my boat 1994 Mastercraft Prostar 190 - 2500lbs in the garage. Curious if you have any recommendations for accomplishing this and what winch you would recommend as well as installation of the specified winch?

asked by: Chad G

Expert Reply:

I am assuming the boat is on a trailer when stored in the boat house which will make things a lot easier. So basically what you could do is use a winch that can pull/lower the trailer and boat up and down the ramp. To load the boat on the trailer you would need to mount a winch to the trailer.

For a winch to mount in the boat house you could just go with a hand winch such as # F143201, which has an automatic brake, with cable # DL24100. If the boat house has AC power then you could use an electric winch like # DL25046. Or if you want to use a regular car battery you could use # DL25040.

Winches require a straight line pull at least 12 inches from where the cable exits the winch. To avoid having to mount a winch at an awkward angle or have support components with pulley blocks in the way you would need to mount the winch on a sturdy structure up off of the ground. The structure needs to be able to handle the weight of the boat.

You would have to mount the winch at the opening of the door or thereabouts so that the line pulls out into the boat house. Then you would have to mount a pulley block at the opposite end of the boat house centered with the ramp. The line will go from the winch to the pulley block and from the pulley block to the tie off point on the trailer. The pulley block will have to be mounted so that the cable is not scraping the ramp but not so high that it would pull the boat and trailer up once it go far enough into the boat house.

I made a crude drawing of what this might look like.

The two electric winches above come with pulley blocks. The hand winch does not so you could use # BDW20023.

expert reply by: Michael H

click to enlarge

Craig

7/27/2020

I am looking to create a similar setup. My boat ramp is 50' in length which means, if I use the pulley method, I would need approximately 60' of cable. Do you have a winch system that can accommodate that much cable? And I'm assuming the location of the winch can be at a 90 degree offset (to the left or right) of the pulley. I can draw a diagram if that would help. Thank you.

Jon G.

8/4/2020

We have the Dutton-Lainson # DL10786 Brake Winch which can handle up to 51' of 5/16" diameter cable, but the longest cable we have available is only 25' so you'd have to source the longer cable somewhere else. For a pulley you can use part # BDW20023 and have your winch set up at a 90 degree angle.

Hem

5/1/2021

I have an exact setup on the Hood Canal in WA state. I added a nose wheel with dual tires as the load capacity of pneumatic tires is relatively low. Next, removed the hitch and bolted a Pintel hitch. I have a 3,000 # 110 volt AC winch bolted into a concrete pad that can launch and retrievemy Smokercraft. I also affixed a ladder on the tongue of the boat that allows me to get in and out of the boat while the stern is in the water. The system works great and it takes me less tha 10 minutes for me to get in the water!

Dcq

5/17/2021

@Hem - what exact model winch do you have? I'm over on the internet trying to do the exact same thing and having a hard time finding a 110v winch that will pull up 3000lbs or so.