Rope winch for raising boat to rafters

I am looking for a way to hoist my boats to the rafters of a shed. The rafters are about 16’ overhead. I have rope hoists now that I bought from harbor freight on either end of each boat but after a year they aren’t holding up as well as I would like. Here is the link to them http://www.harborfreight.com/general-purpose-rope-hoist-45076.html I would like to do something a little bit simpler and have a hand cranked winch just pull the rope and raise the boat. I like this setup because I can back my truck in under the boats and lower them down onto the truck. Any help locating some not so expensive winches that I can mount to some 8x8s would be appreciated. I intend to use 3/8" rope that will be about 40’ - 50’ long.

Check out Northern Tool
I have four boats hung from the ceiling, each raised by one winch. I use a boat-trailer winch, the smallest one I could get from Northern Tool. I think it was about twenty bucks at the time. They should still carry them.



For what it’s worth, with my setup, once the rope leaves the winch and goes around whatever corners are necessary (via pulleys), the rope spits in two and goes over a pair of lifting pulleys. That way, hand-cranking one rope raises or lowers two ropes that are attached to the hangers that support the boat.

Sounds good but…
how does your rope split in two directions? Are you actually running two ropes in one winch?

A picture is worth a lotta words:
I wish I had better photos of this. Someday I’ll post shots that clearly illustrate the method I use.



In this photo, you see three winches, each of which winds up ONE rope that raises and lowers ONE boat.



http://outdoors.webshots.com/photo/2707629170052885347sZZnDt



This next photo shows how those three main ropes go around the first of two corners on their way to the locations of three different boat hoists.



http://outdoors.webshots.com/photo/2804426620052885347VcXZcD



This last photo shows just one of those ropes pictured earlier, after it has gone around the second and last corner on its way to a boat hoist. At this point, the rope spits in two prior to going over a pair of lifting pulleys (one pulley for each rope) for lifting and storing the boat. If you look closely, you can see one rope coming from the left, and two ropes continuing toward the right. The pair of lifting pulleys (located off-screen and to the right) is nearly in-line with the rope at this point, so there’s no real “fork” where one rope becomes two. They even twist around each other, but simply un-twist as the fork approaches the lifting pulleys as the boat is lowered.



http://outdoors.webshots.com/photo/2520260150052885347RcaFvV



If you look at the full boat-winch album, you’ll see some details about how I modified this method to build a hoist for a friend, in which there’s a winch having a larger spool so that it can wind up two ropes at once, due to lack of space for a traditional “fork” in the rope, but since then I came up with an idea for doubling-up rope-routing on the garage wall, creating the space needed for converting this back to the better, one-rope method. I’ve yet to modify that hoist, and it works okay as is.

Thank you so much.
I like the single to two idea and will start looking into modifying my lifting system. If you can describe your new idea I would love to hear it.

Most of the details are available…
… in that photo album. Using that hoist for the purple canoe as an example, just imagine that your two ropes go to the main lifting pulleys from someplace that’s either directly in front or behind the canoe, and you’ll have a perfect “picture” of how my own hoists are built. Actually, if the “forked” rope goes toward those to pulleys just slightly out-of-line, it’s a little nice so the two branches of the fork don’t twist around each other.



Feel free to shoot me an email if you have specific questions or want to see a photo of a particular part of the setup.