Blue Peter Sailing Dinghy - Launch Trolley

In the interests of sailing this boat, I felt it was going to be a lot to manhandle without a trolley. It might be a little excessive, but I opted to buy some galvanised square section metal and bolt it together. There were a couple of areas I couldn't avoid welding which is frustrating - for two reasons; - firstly, I can MIG weld okay, but only own an Arc Welder. Secondly, Any welds mean that the galvanising is being burned off so rusting can occur.

I've tried to get around the rust issue by painting the trolley with Hammerite. Hopefully it continues to do the trick - it's looking great at the moment.

We are launching to a lake, but something I've noticed is that the standard wheelbarrow style tyres cause the trolleys to float and that makes it problematic to launch as the trolley sticks a little to the boat.

The sand wheels are not buoyant, so the trolley sinks, rolling along the slipway nicely.

Here is a picture of the finished product with boat... typically it was raining so my son looks delighted! I've added grey pipe insulation around the exposed struts where the boat contacts, and, it can't be seen here, but I drilled and screwed some silicone pipe which I attached over the horizontal axle strut for the boat to rest on (much more abrasion resistant than duct tape and pipe insulation).