Case Study: Uphill Marina and Touring Park

Uphill is a small marina and caravan/ touring park located just off the Bristol Channel, south of Bristol and Weston-Super-Mare. There has been a boat yard and moorings of sorts there for quite a number of years, but it was a neglected site without a reputation to write home about.

That is, to say, until the site was purchased by the new owners in 2018. They saw the potential for the site and set about achieving it. This involved (but was not limited to!) modernising the boat yard operation, modernising the pontoons and floating set up, and expanding and modernising the land based facilities.

To that end, one of the first things on the Uphill agenda was looking at the boat lifting/ hauling setup. The existing setup was a very old tractor, towing a one-off-build hydraulic trailer hoist of around 10T lifting capacity. Both bits of kit were in aging condition and of limited use for the customer base (existing and intended).

The site owners took their time to do some thorough research into what options were available to them, and prices and information was sought from the relevant suppliers. There was engagement from P&D Marine Services right from the beginning. A lot of time was taken in checking out what might work best of all – the slipway at Uphill is extremely steep for example so had a significant bearing on possibilities.

In the end the site owners selected a Roodberg HBC15 hydraulic slipway trailer, fitted with hydraulic extending drawbar and 2 pairs of hull support pads. The trailer was also ordered as an extra wide version along with a bilge keel beam support system – thus enabling Uphill could haul out as many boat types as possible within the weight range. The trailer was of course galvanised and painted.

When the trailer arrived PDMS attended site again to help with the commissioning/ fitting to the tractor, as well as providing manufacturer approved training. It helps that the PDMS team have a great number of years of boat yard operational experience under their belts! This training and subsequent visits has also helped with the understanding of how to use Roodberg trailers with various types of cradles and stands – in this case Tennamast products are used extensively.

PDMS continue to provide support and assistance to the Uphill team, including providing industry advice to enable that the most efficient and best industry practices are known. PDMS are becoming more and more known for being the ‘go to’ people for this type of specialist advice and knowledge. We work with numerous other organisations including British Marine and The Lifting Equipment Engineers Association, as we all see together how the industry can maybe improve and modernise.

You can continue to follow the Uphill story on their Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/uphillmarina/

..where you can see their Roodberg trailer hard at work!