When trailering a small boat from an open beach, particularly in marginal sea conditions, the one thing that stands out more than everything else put together in terms of making life easier is the self centring cradle. Gone are the days of trying to line up a narrow keel with a line of well spaced and often well seized rollers along the central spine of a trailer, only to have the boat repeatedly lifted and slammed back down and out of position by each in-coming wave. The amount of time I have wasted struggling to trailer small boats, not to mention repairing keel damage and drying out my wet waders back at home is testament to how bad things used to be. That said, there are times even now when trailering does not perhaps go as smoothly as it might, particularly when retrieving alone, or even with two of you when you can't be in the towing vehicle, operating the winch, and holding the boat straight all at the same time.

I'm sure a lot of people will recognise one particular scenario where, due to a weight distribution imbalance between top heavy cradle rollers and the structure of the cradle itself, exacerbated by incoming waves hitting the back of the trailer, the cradle turns upside down before you have time to trap it in the upright position with the bow of the boat as strap tension is taken up by the winch. If only the thing could be made to sit waiting in the correct position. Well, thanks to a bit of innovative thinking by the R&D people at Trailer manufacturers Indespension, that is exactly what their RollerCoaster cradle can be made to do without constantly going back to it or having someone hold it until the bow of the boat takes over. Now a simple little galvanised add on located on one side of the cradle by two 'U' bolts can cure the problem at a stroke.

The Indespension engineers were talking about tackling this problem the last time I was down at the factory. But having heard nothing since, I thought no more about it until I was over at their new show room in Bolton where Peter Hannis just happened to have a prototype in his office which he invited me to try out and report back on. It transpires that for some reason, the problem seems to be more pronounced amongst Warrior owners, as the Warrior version of the RollerCoaster is built to a slightly different specification than the rest. So we bolted it on, slipped the boat from the trailer, then encouraged it to 'play up' when it was time to get the boat back out of the water. But it wouldn't. Or more to the point, couldn't, as the cut out in the bracket is designed to limit the degree of tilt the cradle has available to it, with the greatest emphasis towards back rather than forward tilt to assist the bow through the rollers. So you need to be sure and position the bulk of the brackets cut away towards the back before fastening the 'U' bolts up tight, for which reason this, two minute job is perhaps best done on the beach with the trailer empty offering better access, and allowing you to check the angle of tilt.