There was a group of us shoestring sailors in Bayside Maine that all kept our boats on wood cradles. After my Ranger 23 was delivered from Dave Evans place in Onset Mass, I had to build my cradle under the boat while it was sitting on borrowed jackstands. We would launch and haul-out every year in a group DIY effort. To launch, we hired a backhoe on tracks to come at low tide and pull the cradles (with boat) down onto the beach to about the mid tide mark (10 to 12 foot tides in our part of Maine). We then have to pile enough rocks onto all the cradles to hold them down in the water after the boats are off, there are plenty of good sized rocks on a Maine beach at low tide. When the tide comes in far enough, the boats lift off and we take them out to their moorings. At the next low tide, we remove the rocks and the cradles are hauled up to the community cradle yard, this time by a 4 wheel drive truck. While the tide is still low we step the masts by hand in a group effort, 3 or 4 people handing the masts down from the dock, and 3 or 4 people on the boat to attach all the stays and hold the mast upright during the critical period when it is stay-less. We try to do this at a morning low tide when the bay is pretty calm. Haul-out was a reverse of the process. This was all a bit labor intensive and stole a couple of days from the already short Maine season, but it was a neat, old fashioned and a fun kind of communal way of doing things. The plus side was my haul and launch costs amounted to my share of the cost of the backhoe and the truck which was usually about $200 total for both ways. Now, for my Ranger 29 I spend a lot more. The heaviest boat in this picture was the Pearson 26, the rest were Ranger 26’s, my Ranger 23, a Tanzer 22 and a Rhodes 19. Note, there is one empty cradle in the picture, whose owner was late getting his boat in to the cradle and had let the tide drop to low to make it on. He had to get the backhoe back the next day.