Garage Door Clearance

[cheapsyacht]

Hello;  I just bought my second Com Pac Yacht, the first having been a Com Pac 16 which went right into my garage.  The new boat is a 2001 Sun Cat I found at Yacht Works in Sister Bay, WI.  The poor previous owner had it in the water 1 time and passed away after very carefully storing the boat in a garage in WI where it still looked like brand new.  I towed the boat some 240 miles to my summer home in Garden MI on Lk Michigan where the boat will be moored during sailing season.  I have a brand new 24x36' garage there with 7 foot high door openings.  The Sun Cat on it's Precision trailer will not clear due to height of mast, mast stub and gallows.  I'm thinking of all sorts of tactics to reduce the height of the boat on the trailer to get it into the garage but wondered if anyone else has dealt with this and has any ideas.  My ideas are to remove gaff and main booms, mast and stub mast and cut the vertical tubes on the gallows with a pipe cutter and put pieces of tubing inside gallows uprights to allow slip-fit dis-assembly there.  I even thought of finding some heavy duty casters to mount on trailer frame that would allow wheel hubs to just clear the ground with tires removed to lower the trailer just to move into and out of garage.  Any other ideas on how to reduce overall height to 83" would be highly appreciated. 
Thanks.

[JLK]

I also have a 2001 Suncat on precision trailer and a 24' x 36' garage with 83" clearance at the door. I put my Suncat in the garage for the winter without any permanant modification to the boat. Take the two bolts out of the mast at the hinge and lay the mast on the deck. Remove the screws holding the teak gallows to the posts and remove the gallows and lay the mast and boom on the boat. The gallows posts can do not need to be removed.  Push the front of the boat into the garage and use a floor jack to lower the trailer tongue, I put it on a small 3 wheeled snowmobile dolly but you could leave it on the floor jack. With the front lowered the mast stub cleared the top of the door frame by an inch, I was able to push the boat in myself. With the mast stub inside, jack up the tonger, lower your front trailer wheel and jack it all the way to lower the back of the boat. The boom gallows post cleared the door frame by 1/2 an inch. Your in! If you needed a little more clearance you could let some air out of the tires.
    It's not something you'd want to do every time you use the boat, but for storage or to work on the boat for a couple of weeks indoors it's worth the effort.

[cheapsyacht]

Karma- Thanks a ton for your reply.  My Suncat is now in my garage in the UP of Michigan but I took a slightly different route to get it there.  I did use a pipe cutter to neatly cut the upright tubes on the boom gallows.  The uprights are 1" stainless tube with a weld line inside.  I got a couple of 8" long pieces of 7/8" stainless tube, very carefully filed the weld line smooth on the upper section of the uprights so the 7/8" tube slides smoothly, then coated 4" of the 7/8" tube with polyester resin and bonded them into the lower sections of the gallows uprights leaving the other 4" exposed above the lower uprights.  The result is when the gallows is installed you can barely see any evidence they were modified due to the neat cut from the pipe cutter and the gallows can easily be slid on and off leaving only a 10" high tube stub on the stern when I want to put the boat in the garage.  With the and rigging still in place and sail cover on I do essentially as you said, remove the hinge bolts from the mast but I slide the hinge lock tab down into the the sail track of the stub and install the long thru-pin tethered to the mast stub to prevent the to prevent the lock tab and hence the mast from sticking up above the level of the stub.  Instead of using a jack on the tongue I found a different dolly wheel made by Dutton Lainson, model 6740, which mounts it's gearbox above the tongue and when the wheel is cranked all the way up it only sticks down from the tongue 4-3/4".  I also moved the dolly wheel  back just behind the winch stand allowing the nose of the trailer frame without the tongue to be lowered within an inch of the floor.   With the boom gallows removed and the mast disconnected from the hinge and secured as above I can back the trailer up far enough to get the trailer tires onto the flat garage floor with my Econoline van without hitting anything.  I then disconnect from the van, remove the tongue and crank the dolly wheel all the way down.  Now the mast stub will clear the garage door and the boat can easily be pushed back into the garage.  It does not have to go in bow first which is a great savings of effort as the boat does not have to be turned around.  I also participate in the North Carolina Sailboat Company's site and description and good pictures of what I did are on their site at    http://www.ipass.net/sailboat/    then click the Do It Yourself   selection on the site menu 1/2 way down the left side of the page.  Thanks again for your input. 

[cheapsyacht]

I also added pictures of my boat modifications to the new picture gallery area of the site.

[/img]http://com-pacowners.com/gallery2/displayimage.php?album=random&cat=12621&pos=-1097[/img]