What To Do When Your Boat Lift Quits

The mixed crew of dads and kids arrives at the dock at zero-dark-early, excited for the day of fishing ahead. You flip the switch on the lift to lower your boat into the water and … nothing happens. You flip those switches back and forth to no avail, then determine that the motor’s burned out, the circuit breaker has popped and won’t reset, or for some reason electricity is ominously absent. What’s next?

There could be failures other than those involving electricity, such as mechanical failures, and you should do a diagnostic check. But often the above scenario is what we face, and that’s what we will discuss here. Don’t be too quick to cancel the trip and disappoint your guests, because you can lower many boat lifts manually. In fact, I was faced with this exact situation last summer after an abnormally high tide swamped an electrical conduit under the marina parking lot and shorted out the system. But with some on-the-spot Googling and a little hard work, in about an hour we had the boat afloat.

There’s a wide range of boat lifts on the market, and in some cases saving the day may simply not be an option. When it’s possible, however, some specific tools may be necessary (or at least extremely helpful). It may take an hour instead of a minute, and you won’t be able to lift the boat back up afterward. But in many situations, splashing that hull and saving the day will be an option worth pursuing.

Better Safe Than Sorry

Because we’re talking about equipment that moves tons at a time, first we have to cover the safety angle. Considering all the different types of boat lifts on the market, remember that the methods described here may or may not work for your specific lift. And even if it’s doable, that doesn’t always mean it’s the wise move.

Read your owner’s manual and follow it to the letter; in some cases, the manufacturer will spell out a method for lowering the lift manually. But if it recommends against doing so, naturally, we do, too. Follow all of the manufacturer’s recommended safety protocols just as you would when operating the lift with power (e.g., keeping hands and limbs away from cables and gears, staying off the boat while it’s lowering). If the company is silent regarding lowering without electricity, find out why or just don’t do it. Also, turning the gear wheel rather than the pulley can result in injury, so be sure you’ve properly identified the pulley (the wheel with the drive belt attached to the motor; see your owner’s manual if unsure which is which). Prior to lowering a lift manually, ensure that all switches and circuit breakers are turned off and power has been cut completely, even if it already appears to be out, so there’s no possibility of the lift kicking on unexpectedly.

Grunt Versus Gears

There are hydraulic boat lifts and pneumatic boat lifts that work on entirely different principles. But most of the units out there can lift tons at a time with a measly little motor because the torque generated by every rpm is multiplied by spinning a much larger flywheel pulley via a drive belt. If you can easily access the pulley, which is often as simple as lifting or unscrewing and removing a cover, you can remove the drive belt and spin the pulley manually to lower the boat. But – and this is a big but – expect the lift to move excruciatingly slowly if you’re turning it by hand. Hundreds of rotations will translate into mere inches of movement, and if the boat is elevated by 4 or 5 feet, it will likely be hours before it’s afloat. Also, turning a gear wheel by hand can result in serious injury.

In most cases, you can speed the process significantly by crafting a handle of some sort to rotate the pulley rapidly. A 4- or 5-foot boathook or mop handle inserted between the pulley’s spokes works well and will shrink those hours down to minutes. Tying a short length of rope around the rim of the wheel may work, too. Another way to speed the process is to look for a nut in the center of the flywheel pulley. If it has one, you can fit a wrench or ratchet over the end.

With lifts that have separate fore and aft motors, you’ll need to be careful to keep the bow and stern of the boat even. Never let one end or the other get more than a few inches ahead or behind, even if that means lowering one slightly then switching to the other, and continuing to move back and forth between the two. If at all possible, it’s best for two people to work together simultaneously, one on each pulley.

In some cases, power tools will be handy, and prepping for this eventuality can be smart. Again, every lift is different, so check your owner’s manual to see if this is an option and if special tools or bits are required. Lifts equipped with Lift Tech Marine motors, for example, come with a specially designed power drill bit that fits over the back of the motor shaft, which then allows you to spin the shaft with the drill. On some other lifts, you can remove the motor and slide a motor bypass tool (essentially a drill bit shaped and sized like the motor shaft and keyway) directly into the gearbox. Using a power tool to lower the boat does take longer than normal lift operation, but will require a fraction of the time (and work) it takes to spin it down by hand.

Saving The Day

So what happened after we discovered the power was out that day last summer? We used the handles from a couple of scrub brushes, two at a time, one fore and one aft, to spin the pulleys. It took slightly under an hour to lower the boat about 5 feet into the water. An hour after that we had happy anglers grinning from ear to ear as they held up their first Chesapeake Bay redfish. When we returned to the marina, we tied up the boat at the courtesy dock. Though if you have a private dock you’ll have to determine what you’ll do with the boat afterward. Dropping the boat down is far easier than lifting it up, so if you don’t have a backup plan, the boat may be safer left in place until the electricity can be restored. Or maybe you can tie the boat up at a neighbor’s dock. Because if you don’t lower that lift, you’ll lose an entire day afloat – banish the thought