Episode 11 Bendy giant skateboards and other inventions I should patent

My mother once had a book that included a plethora of pending patents. Early in the 20th Century, according to my abiding memories of that book, men in sheds everywhere were busy at work inventing devices for enlarging the female breast. No other cause, it seemed, was worthy of such intense and sustained endeavour. The number of patents awaiting approval was staggering.

At some point in the following decades, the mania for patents ran out of steam. Perhaps it was because the really useful inventions, like the adjustable airfoil surfaces that made powered flight possible, or the electric light bulb, or Bakelite, had already been invented and those who were destined to become rich had got rich and had bought all the spare Islands in the world so that there were none left for the rest of us. Perhaps, also, came the dark realisation that, no matter how hard you tried, it was all too easy for someone else to steal your invention, alter a small part of it and then claim it as his or her own. Bill Gates did this, according internet-lore, by re-writing IBM's operating system with the boot disk assigned the letter C, rather than A (or whatever IBM had decided it was), and that is why everything we do now is on the C Drive, and why Bill Gates owns several Islands (or, he has the capacity to).

(I might add that I hold no ill-will toward Mr Gates for his wealth, and would be flattered should he read my blog and feel that his day had got a little brighter on account of it.)

My plans to buy Islands with the riches from my inventions are remote, to say the least. Which is not entirely fair when I consider how clever they are. Of course, you may consider otherwise, but you'd be biased.

Take, for example, my invention of the giant bendy skateboard for re-inserting swing keels back into trailer-sailers when they are suspended in straps from beams in one's car port at home.

When I think of how many times this really useful invention would be, well, really useful, I am flabbergasted that no-one before me has rushed with the idea to the local patent office, drawings still wet with ink and the kind of perspiration that comes from an inspired and feverish brow.

The problem I was trying to solve was this; having got the keel out, how do I get it back in again when it was too heavy to lift, or even to drag around on the floor? I had estimated the weight at about 210kg, and if you've ever tried to move a large plate of this weight, lying flat on the ground, you'd know how heavy that is. Further, I needed to get it up on its edge before manoeuvring it back under the boat, and lifting it into place, then aligning it with sub-millimetre accuracy with the keel-pin hole so that I could re-insert the keel-pin.

So, I thought, I needed a kind of skateboard with castors and wedges to hold the thing upright. My particular genius was to make it out of plywood, of which I had a number of off-cuts lying around, with castors on top-fixed beams. Having assembled my skateboard, a controlled load test (I stood on it) instantly revealed that the insertion of the keel would bend the skateboard to such an extent that it would drag its belly on the ground. After a short reflection, I decided that this was a good thing because it would yield sufficient clearance between the top of the keel and the underside of the boat, unlike a rigid arrangement. The clearance was vital, and without it the re-insertion operation would be impossible.

When the shipyard had finished with my keel, the payment of a final slab of beer persuaded them not only to drop my keel back at home, but to lay it carefully, on its edge, into my giant bendy skateboard, which held it upright and sagged as expected. To my relief, I found that I could drag the skateboard, now burdened with heavy keel, across our nice, new concrete car port slab with no damage to concrete or keel. And lo, it passed under the boat with about an inch to spare.

My next problem was to lift it up into place, which I did by incrementally levering the  giant bendy skateboard up and placing shoring timber beneath. Slowly, the keel rose to the requisite height until the holes aligned for the keel pin. The bendiness of the skateboard proved its worth again, when I needed to remove it from under the keel, by allowing me to insert pieces of timber under the keel and so take its weight as I extracted the skateboard. After filing a taper into the end of the keel pin (to compensate for the less than sub-millimetre alignment I had actually achieved), a few light blows from the hammer was sufficient to knock it into place, whereupon the trickiest stage in the process was completed. I was greatly relieved.

I then reconnected the keel-lifting line and found that the electric winch didn't have enough oomph to lift the keel fully. This, then, led to the rewiring of the boat. Sadly, my dreams of patenting my giant bendy skateboard got lost as I puzzled over the rewiring project, and my rewiring project became entangled in the project to re-seat the rear rail, and the project to re-seat the rear rail led to the project to get access to the transom. The law of one thing leading to another, to another, to yet another, was truly at work in my boat.

If you're beginning to glaze over at this point, I forgive you fully, and without qualification, and will save those lurid details for later. In the meantime, I leave you with photographic evidence of the usefulness of my really useful invention, taken when the keel was partly raised back into the keel box from whence it came. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you my giant bendy skateboard ...

Keel dolly for maneouvring the keel under the boat

Replacing the keel in the keelbox, showing the giant bendy skateboard suspended on shoring.