Help needed

[Chris_374480939]

I am a final year Student and I am trying to find out how many caravanners are affected by the problem of transporting a boat or similar item aswell as a caravan, or if anybody has any solutions they implement.

If anyone can help i would be very grateful, Thankyou.

 

[602]

Hi Chris,

Absolute coicidence, I had an email from my son this morning. He is in Oz. The following is an extract from that mail ......

......The 'F' series of Fords are common in Oz, mostly older F150's - the only 'car' that will out tow the land/range rovers, useful if your pulling firstly a huge caravan and then a 25' boat behind that!

Hope that helps. ;-)

602

 

[Lutz]

Although it may be possible to tow two trailers in Australia, it isn't, of course, here. A neighbour who was both an avid sailor and caravanner therefore hit on the idea of putting the dinghy inside the caravan. Unfortunately, the dinghy was a few inches longer than the inside length of the caravan. Being our lab boffin on adhesives, he cut a short section out of the dinghy and stuck it back together again.

 

[Steve L]

Hi Chris.

I sail a Mirror dighy and tow an Abbey 540 with my Laguna estate. At the moment we have the van on a seasonal pitch, so towing the boat is easy, but in the past I have take both away on holidays to the gower coast.

I simply load the dighy onto the roof rack on the car, then put the dinghy road trailer on top of the dinghy. Hook up the caravan and drive to the site, set the van up, take the boat off the roof of the car. Now I have the boat on it's trailer ready to hook up and go and have fun.

The only down side to this is you get that "jaw dropping double take" from the boys in blue as you cruise the roads. But so long as your loading is legal, don't worry about a thing. Also the aerodynamics of the upturned dinghy might even help fuel economy.

Steve L.

 

[Lutz]

If you have dinghy plus road trailer on the roof of the car aren't you exceeding the maximum permissible roof load limit? Most cars have a 75kg limit, same as noseweight.

 

[ValA.]

We've solved the problem by having in inflatable canoe (proper White Water 3 job, not a cheap yellow kiddies inflatable) which packs into a (large) ruck-sack when not in use, and the ruck-sack becomes a wet bag when on the water. Simples!

 

[CheapnCheerful]

It is legally possible to tow two trailers in this country - The fairground showmen do it often enough with lorry + trailer + caravan. It would also be possible to do it with a car/trailer/caravan, but in practice would be very difficult to achieve either safely or legally. First if all, the trailer would need to be a four wheeler drawbar type trailer - that is steerable axle at the front, fixed at the rear. The weight of the trailer and caravan still cannot exceed the maximum tow weight - so you are going to need something that can tow 3.5 tonnes. The 4 wheel trailer would be the equivalent of a car, as far as the caravan is concerned, so particularly in this situation the caravan would have to weigh no more than 85% of the trailer, and you would also have to have two trailer indicator warning lights on the dash. so to do it you would need a custom built trailer and probably add plenty of ballast to it. God Knows what would happen if the outfit started to snake!!!! So not really recomended!

Incidentally, nothing can legally out tow a Landrover - the legal limit is 3.5 tonnes, and as a Landrover can tow this, no other car can tow more. In fact on my old Range Rover, if you fitted coupled brakes instead of the overun type, you were allowed up to 4 tonnes!!