Kato Marine Island Davits - refit - 5 of 5 - 2014

Beginning of December 2014 Barra-Bahia de Navidad Lagoon

The Kato Marine Island Davit project is complete. We are currently in Bahia de Navidad lagoon and have the dinghy with Honda 9.9 on it and the DaNard dingy wheels with the other gear inside (fuel tank, oars, fender 20’ lock and cable etc). and the davits are holding up just fine. We can lower the stern steps and raise them, securing them with the sliding bolts and the rail slides. OK we have one bummed out rail slide because our stern steps are not working perfectly. The hinge on the stern steps needs to be re-built so the stern steps hang to one side. This has nothing to do with the davits, the Achilles dinghy weight puling on the stern rail. This was a problem before we re-did the dinghy davits. We could not open or close the stern steps because with the dingy loaded it was causing the stern rail to prevent the steps from closing properly and we were concerned that without the steps secured the stern rail would fail.

John helping with the engineering.

Not now - we can drop the stern steps and come and go as we 

please with the full dingy raised! Swim or paddle board or kayak as we please!

Bracket we had made for chain plate bolt.

Bracket we had made for chain plate bolt with SS support. 

This is still a mock-up.

Sizing up the placement for the brackets to hold the support. 

They will be welded to the davit support.

The SS bracing is from old salvaged stanchions. We cut them to fit. This saved us some coin as we were overrun as it was from welding costs. We will remove them next summer and have them buffed and we will polish them. They do have a few gouges but again this is not a YC boat and the gouges are not all that noticeable.

Red line indicates what was welded onto the

 Kato Marine Island Davit for stern rail support.

Red line indicates what was welded onto the Kato Marine Island Davit and stern mount.

We welded 8" onto the existing  Kato Marine Island Davit stern supports. We got the original ones from  Kato Marine Island Davit who had made some for another 36'  Islander Freepport.

We welded one foot to the bottom of the  Kato Marine Island Davit davits. But we had cut 6" off previously to originally mount them so it is really 6" you would need to add to the length. Also we welded a support from that bottom stretch to the exisiting outside support. The curved section.

We need to make some minor adjustment. Perhaps we will re-position the stern anchor.

We need to replace some screws with the proper size ones.

We do have the Garhauer Marine LiftingDavit mounted which will not be the case most of the time but good now for our testing

Gabriel, John's assistant, helped putting 

the Kato Marine Island Davits together after welding.

In the Bahia de Navidad Lagoon.

Next summer we are adding a power winch to the engine side of the davits. We have the winch now and most of the wiring but need some SS welding done first. We just ran out of time to install it before we left Paradise Village Marina in Banderas Bay Mexico. With the electric winch we can change/remove the 6.1 blocks and use one block and just a hook on the dinghy. This will raise the motor end of the dinghy up much higher on the davits, plus we will just click the remote!

Stern steps down, no problem!

Stren steps floating.

Also now we can raise the Achilles dinghy with the steps in the water, this makes life easier. There were many a times when some line got fouled or other issue and we had to re-lower the stern steps to deal with the issue. This was a real pain in a lumpy anchorage and you are tired from a day of it and it is dark. No more, we just step down and fix the issue.  We can also now lower the steps before lowering the Achilles 10.2 dinghy. This means we do not have to push off the dinghy with the Shurhold boat hook to get the dinghy out of the way. This was a pain. Now just lower the dinghy and step in! As much as we anchor and use the dinghy this all makes life so much easier.

Now our stern anchor rode clears the dinghy. Before with the dinghy sat too low in the davits and the stern anchor rode would chafe the bottom of the dinghy. No more, not a problem.

We have marked the areas that we have had welded so if another 36’ Island Freeport owner wished to add the davits then this is what works. You can still duck your head under the dinghy to see if a freighter is bearing down on you.

The dinghy gets turned around when the motor is mounted on the boat, not on the dinghy. The bow clears the Honda 9.9 outboard nicely.

We did not need to add a lot of SS tubing and we did not need to muck up the view or clutter up the stern rail. There is enough of that with bimini solar supports and Air Breeze wind generator support SS tubing :)