50ft Cruising Yacht Davit Crane

Last crawled date: 1 year, 10 months ago

Custom project which added a davit crane for a small dinghy. The crane was installed onto an existing fiberglass-foam cored yacht hardtop as a retrofit. Dinghy is stowed on cross bars and is secured using ratchet straps. This is an electrically powered winch with manual height adjustment davit that is manually rotated to launch and retrieve dinghy with one person. The dinghy is a custom wooden craft which weights approximately 150lbs and is deployed using a proprietary bridle system which allows dinghy to be initially lifted and swung out from the yacht's hardtop and automatically rolls dinghy into floating position as it is lowered to the water. Retrieval uses the same bridle system to initially lift, then roll, dumping any bilge water accumulated inside, and finish upside down and ready to be swung over stowage rack and strapped down upside down.

The crane is an off the shelf product from Nautical Structures which used a custom, flat platter bearing to install to the leveling plinth. The crane itself is rated for 900 lbs, but the support structure of the yacht limits the max working load to 200lbs, which is adequate for the specific dinghy to be used in addition to some design factor for unplanned shock/jerk events related to dinghy that is partially full of water or an operator stepping into the dinghy, once launched. The foundation to which this assembly is installed is a composite foam/E-glass structure with reinforcing pre-preg laminated arches on the underside to provide additional stiffness. The structural engineering for this composite structure is proprietary and can not be shared.

The .3DM model and .Step file show davit crane, basic bearing, leveling plinth, outer and inner G10 composite plates, hardware, and a segment of the composite-foam structure to which the crane was mounted.