Tom,
The ladder would usually come with the boat. It wouldn’t do your PO any good unless he was planning on putting it on another boat.
Some store them in the head on mounting clips...it’s not in there, is it?
I think the best practice is to leave it in the aft bracket at all times...in the pointing-up position when on the boat and trailering. That way a single handling MOB can pull it up out of the bracket, reverse it to the down position and climb aboard. It weighs 9 lbs but floats. Likewise, when trailering at a rest stop and you want to get back on the boat, it’s much easier to climb up the ladder than to climb on from the wheel fender.
I used to worry that a big enough wave or pothole could jar it up out of the bracket, and held it down with a strong bungy, but decided that the jarring out scenario would never happen.
After a day at the sand bar, remember to pull up the ladder. If you don’t, performance will be adversely affected. On a prior boat I had the model that would automatically re-position if you take off with it in the down position. It’s not worth the money or complexity.
I’d advise the three-step model. Even with that, when anchoring or beaching in very shallow water, when the hulls touch the sand, it will tend to push the ladder out of the bracket. The ladder bottoms out before the bottom of the hulls do. However, the 2 step model’s bottom step would be way too high when deployed. Even though it floats, we don’t want to return from a long beach walk and find it floated toward Milton rather than toward the beach. Granted very few folks anchor in as shallow water as we do with the engines up (about 4 inches above our knees). For scuba divers in deep water, the four step model is best/easiest...note Phil has both in his pics.
http://stores.armstrongnauticalstore.co ... ch-length/
I use this site, same price as EBay. In this part of Florida, where the soundside beaches are soft sand, and most boaters don’t have anchors, or PFD’s, or VHF radios….but I digress... it’s popular to run the bow up on the sand. I installed an Armstrong platform mount on the starboard sponson bow so we can move the same ladder forward and board/disembark from there, but seldom use it as we like stern to the beach.
http://stores.armstrongnauticalstore.co ... xtra-long/
It took us a year to figure out that our Tom Cat was the only one we’ve ever seen that came without aft boarding rails. Adding custom boarding rails was the best $260 we ever spent on the boat. Before that it was a really challenging athletic endeavor.
Martin, yes it’s easy for a MOB in the water to reposition the ladder.
Happy Shopping!
John
