Is there such a thing as a rowing boat suitable for surf which I could wheel a couple of blocks from my house to the beach on a kayak cart? I would love to have a New Jersey lifeboat, but where I live I would have to trailer it to a boat ramp. I am very experienced in these boats as well as shells, so I could row anything. The problem is that I want to just walk it down to the beach and go. Thanks in advance for any answers.

-- Allen DeWeese (adeweese@gate.net), September 02, 2001

Answers

Allen, Have you looked at the Virus boats. They have a website. The boats appear to have lots of bouyancy and an open transom.

-- Ernie DeRushie (ederushie@zipsigns.com), September 06, 2001.

I built a wheel set for my sea bright skiff and roll it down the street to an opening (through the dunes) to the beach. The beach buggy wheels are expensive, but they do last. Drop me a note, if you get to the point where you'd like to build a set (or have me build a set for you.) I've always wondered what would happen if my boat, while rolling down the street, ran into a car (or a car ran into my boat). What would the investigating police officer say?

-- Marc J. Epstein (tercon@superlink.net), September 22, 2001.

The other possiblity is to use a larger dolly, Sietech sells a bunch of different ones. http://www.sietech.com

That would open up your choice of boats to anything you could roll. Remember though that while you may be able to dolly a boat on the flats, on the beach, if its steep it will "self launch!" and then retrieval would require a horse or ATV, or tractor! (This comes from trying to dolly my dory with the trailer at a boat launch, hitting the gravel at the bottom and sliding boots and all to the water.) - Gary-

-- Gary Powell (gwpowell@hotmail.com), June 23, 2004.