Sea Legs Portable Lift?

[Mosnowman]

Stumbled onto this site and was curious if anyone has any experience with this thing? I'm a little bit skeptical especially since they have been around since 1994 and looking at the dealer map they are only in the Northern states?

Thoughts?

http://www.sea-legs.com/default.htm

[jimrs]

I think the reason you find them in the north more is that most of the southern lakes have mud bottoms.

[Bamaman]

They're pretty neat to have on a 2 toon boat, but hang down a little below the crossmembers. They catch some waves and slow the boat down a little. Their weight also takes away from the passenger load.

I'd be afraid to leave my boat on SeaLegs if I wasn't present. Sometimes, hydraulics bleed down, but I don't know if that's applicable with SeaLegs.

A candilever style lift can be bought for about the same $.

[dockholiday]

Yep Bama's first sentence is what kept me from buying. I will be in the market for a new dock an lift next year. If those reasons listed don't come into play they would probably be a good choice. Most reports here on people that have installed them have been positive. To me if you are spending almost 500 bucks on a prop to give you optimum performance adding additional unneeded weight isn't a good thing, not to mention any possible additional drag. I do like the dock anywhere aspect of them an they would work great on our sand bar gathering spot.

doc

[Bamaman]

If someone was a slow cruiser on a relatively shallow lake, they'd probably be great.

But we're on a very deep water, large wave lake, and we cruise @ 20-25 mph. The waves they'd catch wouldn't be consistent with the way we boat.

[ronb]

We see them around here, people on our lakes like them. You can always tell which 'toons have them and which don't. The ones that don't bob up and down with the waves. The most creative use I saw for them so far was a lady pulled up to the sandbar and raised only the rear of her pontoon so that the pontoon basically tilted at a 35° angle, this put the front of the pontoons under a lot of stress, but it also put the deck of her pontoon about 8" off the ground. She had to tiny 'lap dogs' that must have weighed about 12lbs each. With the pontoon parked at this strange angle, they could jump on and off with ease. The pontoon had lounger seats in the front and the passengers just laid and sunbathed (not picture worthy ) while the lapdogs ran on and off.

it was weird...

[margaritaman]

It looks like the future for pontoons will be for triple logs and their market will be somewhat limited.

[tkrein]

some of the smaller lakes around here you see them. up at golden lake i think every pontoon had them except mine. they left them up while they were away. I dont think I would get a set as they are heavy 400 pounds or something like that.

[rsmith]

I like the concept, looks like they make them for tri-toons as well. Unfortunately I couldn't make much use of them at my late, we're usually in at least 8 feet of water, my slip is in 14'. Any shallower than 6 or so feet and the weeds are too much of an issue to swim, etc. and we haven't ever beached ours yet, but that wouldn't drive the need.

Sure wise our marina would allow lifts to be installed though! I would put one in in a heartbeat.

[onthelaketwo]

The make a version for pontoons with 3 longs.

also another company Hewitt makes a similar product.

I am totaly satisfied with the sea legs on our pontoon boat.

Best part is boat can be raised exactly to height of dock, and is sturdy for stepping onto boat from dock. This allowed me to take out elderly people in their 80's, people with bad knees who had not been on boat for years.

I have stood on the dock with 60 mile an hour winds to see how the boat held up. No problems the boat was secure.

Downside: loss of load capacity

other Upsides: awesome for sand bars, awesome for not having to have lift removed from lake each fall, nice when i park my boat at other houses for a few days

[Todd4]

How much do they go for? Ballpark figures. Thanks.

Todd

[Bamaman]

I was thinking they're about $4K.