Years before I bought my Ariel, a good friend bought one (243). The boat was about 70 miles from his home, and needed enough work that it was going to have to live in his back yard for a while.
The solution we came up with, and executed, was to build a cradle out of 4x4's and 2x6's so that the foot print would perfectly align with a U-Haul tandem axle car trailer's skids.
Basically it is a large box with no top. There are two uprights on each side, and it was very heavily constructed. We fit the pads to the end of each arm and covered them with carpet. The marina held it on the lift for about 30 min while we fit the pads to the hull, and then set the boat into the cradle.
The only draw back to this arrangement was that the tow vehicle had to be pretty substantial. The trailer is 3400#, the cradle was at least 500#, and of course the boat is 5500-6000#. The trailer has surge brakes, so that is taken care of. My F-250 pulled it with no problem.
Of course this post is only intended to give ideas, I am not proposing that any sane person would ever try this. It worked for us though, and the boat has been sitting in that same cradle for several years.
Removing the cradle
We jacked up the cradle using bottle jacks placed between the skids. Then 1" pipes were placed under the skids and the cradle was lowered onto the pipe 'rollers'. The cradle was tied to a fence post, and the trailer was SLOWLY pulled forward and cinder blocks were placed under it as it hung off. Really no harder then setting up a trailer, or a mobile storage shed.
It sounds like a PITA, but it really was not too bad. The credit for the engineering goes to my buddy, the only problem we had in the move was when he pit a boring bit into his ankle. The cradle was quite overbuilt, and we took our time on the trip and unloading it so I really don't think it was overly dangerous.
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The one quote we got before the move was over 2 grand, and we did it for about $250.
I know I had posted this somewhere before.
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