Jan 21. Rear Roller and Painter Eye

The problem with the eye bolt is that I can't mount it with through bolts as I normally would because I already filled the peak of the boat with foam. So I have to mount this homemade eye hardware solely from the outside. Here is my solution. 

That's two pieces of rebar welded to two angle brackets and the whole thing is attached with 8 screws and bedded in thickened resin. It seems quite solid. At the end of the day I tested all of this page's mods by launching and retrieving the boat onto the grass with only the winch. The winch strap gets pretty taught and the strap is pointed right at my face while I'm cranking. If the eye lets go, I'm gonna need surgery. I duck my head and keep cranking. I think it'll hold. 

The winch is just higher than the eye so the boat lines up with the roller and the bunks as you crank. 

I'm sorta proud of this roller. Drift boat rollers from drift boat webs sites cost $100. I made this one from $20 in parts from the local building supply store. Two 1 1/4" flanged bearings and a 4' length of conduit. I would rather have used cast iron pipe, but that's getting hard to come by. 

Hand made brackets hold it in place. This whole system worked pretty well. Less that 5 minutes to launch and retrieve the boat from the lawn.