The Henderson Method

We had a lot planned for this weekend but Bill had to work on Saturday accompanying the press at "Monster Jam" at the Arena at Harbor Park in Bridgeport. 1,500 HP trucks that can jump up in the air to the delight of about 5,000 kids. Pretty cool, as it turns out.

On Sunday, we were going to attempt to do what we had planned for over two days: move the new fridge from our front porch to the boat and install it.  That would mean removing the inflatable from our swim platform first and putting it on the cockpit.  The fridge weighs about 75 lbs and we discussed how the two of us would get it up almost 6 feet onto the swim platform and then up and over the transom into the cockpit.

Frances took charge of how we'd do this and she made a drawing of her plan.  As the day went by (and everything worked exactly as she had planned) we came to call this "The Henderson Method."  Here's her drawing:

 

What's not in the drawing is that Frances determined that we should wrap the fridge in a heavy blanket first so we wouldn't damage it.  That's what we did, and we brought along along a hand truck and a short step ladder.

Following Frances'  plan, we unloaded the fridge, put it on the hand truck and brought it back into the shed next to the stern of the boat.

Then we used the short (6 ft.) stepladder to make a ramp up to the swim platform. Just put the fridge on the ladder and the push it up the ladder using it as a skid. Amazingly, it slid up the ladder after giving it a dozen or so big pushes and soon we had it on the swim platform.The Henderson Method was working perfectly.

Working together, we picked it up and put it on the gunwale. Bill balanced it while Frances jumped into the cockpit. There it was. On the boat.

We brought the fridge into the salon, unwrapped it and re-mounted the doors, which we had removed to save a little weight.  We moved it down the stairs into the galley area and Frances slid it in.

 

Plug it in and everything works.

All good so far so we decided to push our luck.  Our original plan was to also remove the swim platform and take it home for refinishing so we thought, what the hell. Let's do it. 

Knowing that it would be difficult to get back on the boat after the swim platform was removed, we took all of our stuff off and then began the task of unbolting it.  Not a pretty sight under there.

The four stainless brackets that hold the swim platform were were secured to the platform with very old bolts and nuts each topped by a rusty castle nut.  The castle nuts broke apart and the nuts holding the platform backed out.  Once the swim platform was loose, we picked it up and put it in the back of our station wagon.

By then, we were getting tired and headed for home. Once there, we moved the 9-ft, 6-inch platform (weighs close to 100 lbs., we'd guess) into our basement work area for refinishing.

All in all, The Henderson Method served us well.  We got a lot done and without Frances' ideas, would probably still be standing around trying to figure out what to do.