"Shortwave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...

With boats bigger than that, it's better to use a professional boat
hauler, but that can be pricey. Most professional boat movers get
$100/$125 per hour plus an upfront "start the engine" (generally a
couple of hundred) fee to get the hauler to the boat, the
mileage/hourly charge starts from there.

You have expensive haulers down there in the People's Republic of CT.

Up here the best know boat hauler/launcher on the south shore is Sims
Brothers. They build their own hydraulic trailers and have quite a "fleet"
of them. To me, they are very reasonable ... I think it was about 200-250
bucks to pick up the boat, haul it about 20 miles to Scituate, launch, hang
around until you felt comfortable that everything worked ok and then took
off to pick up the next person. At the end of the season it was another
200-250 to retrieve the boat, haul it to the house and block it up on
stands. All of their drivers were great to deal with and took time to make
sure everything was "right". No "start the engine" charge, either. I used
Sims Brothers for years when I stored various boats at my house. They even
supplied the storage blocks and gave me a set of stands.

The biggest boat I felt comfortable hauling and launching myself was my old
26' Century 7000 Express. It was a heavy son of gun (probably water-logged)
but I could haul, launch and retrieve it myself onto it's old wobbly
trailer. Of course I was also 12 years younger at the time. When I moved
up to bigger boats I started using Sims Brothers. Now I don't haul anything
anywhere. The boats are stored at the marina.

Eisboch