Having paid a lot of money for his ketch a friend of mine couldn’t really afford a cradle during the first year or so of ownership and asked me to design an economical alternative.

You can see the result on the left and in the gallery below. All the structural timbers are 47mm x 75mm with galvanised straps to prevent them springing out. She didn’t move an inch and Rhyl actually had storm force winds twice that first year. The boat actually weighs over 8 tonnes but, sitting on her keel, the load we were mostly concerned with was the 3-tonne wind load.