Boarding assist handles (stroke survivor)

[adamgoldberg]

My wife had a stroke a few years ago, and has no use of her left arm, and only sorta use of her left leg - she walks slowly with a cane. We're looking for a boat to modify (slightly) to work for her.

We've found that most multihull boats have a fair number of grab rails, but there are places (like stairs) that need a handrail on both sides. That's easy enough ...

Looking for suggestions, etc., for boarding/deboarding. She'll need a solid handhold on the right side (i.e., on both sides ). I've seen rails that mount into a rod holder (West Marine example), and some things like that have a receptacle that can be mounted on the boat.

Ideally, there'd be something that fits securely on a sugar scoop and provides two solid P-shaped handles (where the bulge in the P is outboard), possibly together with a gangplank?

Any ideas?

[deblen]

I Googled "disability access to pleasure boating"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO7EBnsj6iE

[adamgoldberg]

Originally Posted by deblen

I Googled "disability access to pleasure boating"

Yes. Much of the information is for wheelchair-bound people, generally without the ability to walk at all. That's not my situation .

[deblen]

Google "passerrelle" or "boarding ramp"


Also :https://www.boardingramp.com/

[adamgoldberg]

Originally Posted by deblen

Google "passerrelle" or "boarding ramp"

Generally, a passarelle is narrow and has a wimpy "railing" on only one side. A double-wide passarelle with solid handrails on both sides would work - do those exist?

Also :https://www.boardingramp.com/

That might be the worst website I've seen since 1996, but that seems to fit the bill for a gangplank. Thanks!

Anyone have any other suggestions?

[davil]

couple of observations

I have used most contraptions as the degree of disability worsened.

Getting a person on board is only part of the challenge.
A person does not have to be wheelchair bound, if the sling works may be an easier solution, or not.

Any plank devise also may fit the bill, however will need to be carried on board, storage and deployment may be an issue or not

Consider also the vessel you will use, the fewer steps to negotiate, the more joy and use.

Getting down into the cabin and or climbing up in a moving vessel needs to be considered.

Not matter what, you will find a workable solution for the two of you, take your time.

Started to look at trawlers with basically a single lever from slip to cockpit to cabin.

A next step on the horizon.

[Kettlewell]

In my limited experience observing some others with limited mobility one of the things that improved the situation was getting a hard dink with a big flat platform at the bow, like a Carolina Skiff. That platform can help someone step up and out of the dink without having to negotiate the fat, potentially slippery rubber tube of an inflatable. In some cats I have been on and seen it is easier to step onto a stern deck than onto the stern steps, if the bow of the dink can just fit under the stern deck.

[TrentePieds]

Adam:

I gather from your posts that you do not yet have a boat, and therefore that you do not yet have a "home slip". If you had them, and their characteristics and dimensions were therefore known, it would be easier to think constructively about how to solve your "problem".

You say explicitly that your wife does not need a sling. However, I think that must depend on whether your wife's residual strength in her left side is such that using only her left leg, she can stem up her weight. The manner in which she negotiates shore-side stairs will show you that.

To get from any kind pontoon, when moored "side to" along such a thing, up to the top of the coaming of the cockpit will require stairs having at least four and possibly five "risers" of the standard shoreside height of 8 inches, and "treads" of a minimum of 12 inches.

Such a thing is easy to build (or to have built), and if your wife can negotiate shoreside stairs unassisted, she will be able to negotiate such and "accommodation stair". To fit the "boarding stairs" with a sufficiently sturdy handrail would be no trick either. That would solve your problem in your home slip, but obviously such stairs would be too bulky to take aboard.

You'll be aware, of course, that standard procedure for using accommodation ladders and stairs is to descend them BACKWARDS. If your wife can negotiate stairs at all, I suggest that going FORWARDS when going up and BACKWARDS when going down she will do fine because the handrail will always be on the same, the right hand, side.

You see such accommodation stairs occasionally in marinas around here, and I have no doubt that if I needed them, and asked permission of my marina to have them by my home slip, that permission would be granted.

How to handle the situation once your wife is actually aboard, will be a whole different matter, as will how to handle the situation in "foreign ports" where there will be no accommodation stairs. Don't be too quick to dismiss the time tested and utterly reliable sling or "bosun's chair". But since most modern boats take their rigging patterns from the requirements of boats rigged for racing rather than for cruising, they are often sadly deficient in regards to devices such as topping lifts. But there is no reason that employing but a little thought and a little money you cannot modify the rig of almost any boat you might buy so that the main boom will serve as a cargo boom. A dedicated halyard can be permanently fitted to the mast and stowed along it when not in use as a "cargo hoist". The fall of that halyard can be taken to a sheet winch or even to the capstan without any great trouble, and guys for the lateral control of the boom can be shipped in a few minutes when they are needed and could even be permanently rove and stowed on the boom when not in use. Remember that "convention" has nothing to do with this - only your requirements and common sense applied thereto :-)!

If you do not let yourself be trapped by the "wisdom" that evolved half a century ago when, without having even a drop of briny in their blood, every Tom, Dick and Harry had to be a seafaring man, your "problem" is far from insurmountable.

All the best :-)

TrentePieds