I thought I would share my double - stacker Sunfish trailer for those looking for ideas. Having sailed my entire life, and having owned many different kinds of sail and power boats, and configured many different types of open and closed trailers for multiple purposes, has given me a lot of perspective on what works and doesn't work for me. I don't like to waste time with fussy setups when launching and loading, and I like my trailers to perform well, or travel well, without issues for the boats.
I just got back into the Sunfish after a multi-decade hiatus, because my son and I were looking for something to do in the winter when we're not skiing. With two "new" boats and the impending frostbite season upon us I needed to come up with a quick, but solid solution to transporting these boats.
For this trailer I repurposed a 3 year old Karavan trailer that I originally purchased for transporting and launching my sailboat's RIB/tender. I only did this because I needed to get the Sunfish ready for the frostbite season, and I could not find another trailer because of the pandemic. A lot of the used stuff on Craigslist was crap and the lead time on new trailers was longer. I will replace the RIB trailer later.
I removed the winch, roller and bunks from this trailer and then measured it to determine the best approach to get some sort of stacked rack built on top. I like to transport boats upright rather than upside down. It is just much faster to unload them and rig them that way. So I needed to allow for enough room for shaped bunks for the Sunfish hulls, one over another.
As it happens, some years ago, I found a decent, but somewhat beat up, Seitech storage rack on Craigslist. It was a triple stacker that was setup for 420's. We used it in our backyard for many years to store various dinghies, kayaks etc. I decided to re purpose this rack as the "base" for the new Sunfish trailer. It was way too wide, so I disassembled it and cut the cross bars down to a more manageable width for the Sunfish. I discarded some of the more bent and beat up materials but ended up with enough for a solid rack system. I decided to leave enough clearance in case we needed to transport some other kind of small boat in the future.
I used four big U bolts to attach this rack on top of the Karavan trailer. I then cut and shaped four pressure treated 2x8's as cradles for the Sunfish hulls. I bolted these to the Seitech racks. I wasn't able to get my hands on any padding material locally while I was doing this build so as a quick solution I cut up the Seitech pads and stapled them to the cradles. I later ordered some foam rubber and trailer bunk carpet, that I will need to install when I have a chance.
I left the top tier of the rack as is, in case we need to strap another boat or other stuff on top, however I may lower that tier downwards, and throw a Thule box on there that can accommodate the Sunfish blades and other small gear that currently gets tossed in the back of the car.
We tie the boats down with scrap StaSet left over from another boat project; nothing fancy, we just do a single loop over the deck fore and aft and use a truckers hitch to tighten them down. This trailer rides great. The boats are "shorter" in height than my 4runner so they are basically in the slip stream. We have a short highway run to the yachtclub where we frostbite, and it tows at 70-75 with zero fuss. It is really easy to unload the boats onto the dollies for rigging and launching.
I think the next upgrade will be to find some long PVC tubes for the rigs as I have found the sailbags are not waterproof; they collect rainwater if we leave them on the trailer.
I just got back into the Sunfish after a multi-decade hiatus, because my son and I were looking for something to do in the winter when we're not skiing. With two "new" boats and the impending frostbite season upon us I needed to come up with a quick, but solid solution to transporting these boats.
For this trailer I repurposed a 3 year old Karavan trailer that I originally purchased for transporting and launching my sailboat's RIB/tender. I only did this because I needed to get the Sunfish ready for the frostbite season, and I could not find another trailer because of the pandemic. A lot of the used stuff on Craigslist was crap and the lead time on new trailers was longer. I will replace the RIB trailer later.
I removed the winch, roller and bunks from this trailer and then measured it to determine the best approach to get some sort of stacked rack built on top. I like to transport boats upright rather than upside down. It is just much faster to unload them and rig them that way. So I needed to allow for enough room for shaped bunks for the Sunfish hulls, one over another.
As it happens, some years ago, I found a decent, but somewhat beat up, Seitech storage rack on Craigslist. It was a triple stacker that was setup for 420's. We used it in our backyard for many years to store various dinghies, kayaks etc. I decided to re purpose this rack as the "base" for the new Sunfish trailer. It was way too wide, so I disassembled it and cut the cross bars down to a more manageable width for the Sunfish. I discarded some of the more bent and beat up materials but ended up with enough for a solid rack system. I decided to leave enough clearance in case we needed to transport some other kind of small boat in the future.
I used four big U bolts to attach this rack on top of the Karavan trailer. I then cut and shaped four pressure treated 2x8's as cradles for the Sunfish hulls. I bolted these to the Seitech racks. I wasn't able to get my hands on any padding material locally while I was doing this build so as a quick solution I cut up the Seitech pads and stapled them to the cradles. I later ordered some foam rubber and trailer bunk carpet, that I will need to install when I have a chance.
I left the top tier of the rack as is, in case we need to strap another boat or other stuff on top, however I may lower that tier downwards, and throw a Thule box on there that can accommodate the Sunfish blades and other small gear that currently gets tossed in the back of the car.
We tie the boats down with scrap StaSet left over from another boat project; nothing fancy, we just do a single loop over the deck fore and aft and use a truckers hitch to tighten them down. This trailer rides great. The boats are "shorter" in height than my 4runner so they are basically in the slip stream. We have a short highway run to the yachtclub where we frostbite, and it tows at 70-75 with zero fuss. It is really easy to unload the boats onto the dollies for rigging and launching.
I think the next upgrade will be to find some long PVC tubes for the rigs as I have found the sailbags are not waterproof; they collect rainwater if we leave them on the trailer.