Targa arch

[Page 83]

I've located Mr Conroe who built arches for 4 or 5 PDQs. His health has been bad, and he is still dealing with Prostate Cancer. He has not been doing any fabrication for the past year, but is back again with the help of his sons. Unless I find someone else in the Upper Bay, I will ask him to build one for Page 83, PDQ 36026. If any of you have a Conroe Arch, I would like to hear if there is anything about it you would do different. If anyone else has a fabricator to recommend, I would like to hear you too.
I plan to carry my inflateable dinghy and engine, 4 solar panels, and three antennae; two mushrooms and an AIS (VHF) whip. Oh yeah, barbeque grill, porch swing, 24" woofers, and a fox tail on the CB, air horns, searchlight, six rod holders and an automated, anti-jet-ski water cannon. Thats all. This might adversely impact my waterline as the bow climbs 2 feet out of the water. Wonder what Simon would say?

[Page 83]

Sorry, It Conway. His old telephone number still works.

[chicagocat]

24" woofers !!! Party on Sandy's boat !

Actually, I've wondered what this mythical arch looks like for some time. Does anyone have a picture?

[Rich Tanner 36083]

I had Mr. Conway put an arch on hull 83 in 2000 and I am very pleased and have no complaints.
Mine is festooned with a 300# dingy, two solar panels, two antennas, a flag staff and an AirX wind generator. Fox tail to follow.
I had tabs put on in case I decided to guy my wind generator (I don’t use them) and I had a 4-inch by 6-inch plate installed half way up the starboard side to hold my flagstaff.
I also asked him to make the arch as wide as possible, as I have a 10’ 2” dingy.
I don’t take my 15 HP Honda off for crossing, but I do unload my tackle by using strong webbing straps to transfer the weight directly to the arch.
I am very sorry to hear of his medical problems.
Rich

[36041]

Guys,

At the risk of playing the devil's advocate.......

I looked at numerous options for an arch solution on 36041 before deciding to build and weld my own design.

I talked to a very respected shop in Annapolis about doing a design as well as talking to the same man mentioned earlier in this post, but the cost of both were so high that we chose another route.

The dinghy davits supplied by PDQ were more than sufficient in load bearing terms, but without some sort of lateral bracing, they moved entirely too much for any kind of serious sailing.

In the end, we spent 125 dollars in aluminum and about five hours of my time fabricating cross struts to stabilize the original davits and to provide a platform to mount our 4 solar panels (2 x 75 watt, 1 x 100 watt, 1 x 150 watt), our GPS chart plotter antenna and a 15 db wifi antenna.

We have a rigid 9.5 foot, fiberglass catamaran dinghy built by the Livingston Corporation (somewhere out west) that weighs in at a porky 140 pounds. I have raised our dink up on the davits with the engine on board (115 lb Mercury 15 hp 4 stroke) without difficulty, but in truth both my wife and I are both uncomfortable traveling offshore this way, so we usually mount said engine on the rail.

I have also mounted 3 of my 5 fishing rod holders on this structure as well as 2 mini Cannon down riggers and 2 interior water line flat clips for our offshore fishing efforts.

Total cost in the whole project was about 170 dollars and about 10 hours time.

I only mention this here because, one it is 5 - 10% of the cost of the arch being discussed above, two it is about one fifth to one eighth the weight of what is the design above (and our boats are too heavy already), and finally because the entire assembly is bolted on with no new holes in the boat structure, which means it can be removed at some point in the future if the boat is to be sold or if further modifications are required.

I'm not trying to turn anyone off of a permanent mega-arch, but just thought it was worth mentioning a possible alternative.


Good luck Sandy.

Regards,
Tom
36041
http://www.tendervittles.net

[36041]

Hey guys,

We haven't been anywhere lately I can upload pictures, but rest assured they are coming. I even conned my wife into getting the under water camera out and taking some pictures from the bottom side of our arch for a different perspective.

Stay tuned, when we get back to the land of high speed internet, we'll post them.

Regards,
Tom, Amy, Mila and Lunchbox
Duncantown, Ragged Island, Bahamas.

http://www.tendervittles.net

[36041]

Ok, I finally got around to posting the pictures of our arch construction. I also gave a full write up on how I built it and the materials required. Hope this helps.

http://www.tendervittles.net/arch.html

Regards,
Tom

[Lady of the Lake]

I added a link to your page on the http://www.pdq36.com site.

[Page 83]

I'm getting a quote from Russell Bros. for a fairly standard arch. The Fox Tail had to go. I'm sticking with my soft top for a while longer.