Merry Christmas everyone. I'm planning to haul out a 2007 Bavaria 37 and need some guidance on lift points for the travel lift. The page in the manual (11 of 51) is rather blurry and my marina has a constraint of placing the aftmost strap 10.5 feet from the stern. I know the strap should be between the keel and saildrive so I'm not convinced I'll have enough room with this 10.5' constraint. Any guidance on this would be much appreciated.
You're risking a slip and damage to the rudder + shaft, but probably not a drop when it slips. I would find a boatyard that can properly lift your boat. You can measure the distance from stern to saildrive inside the boat, but it's very likely more than your 3.2m limit.
If the image in the manual is to scale then it looks like I need to place the aftmost strap at least 12'7" from the stern well inside of my 10'5" constraint. I'm guessing that the risk of being on the right side of the saildrive but too close to it is potential damage to that hardware during the lift. Every photo I can find of a 37 being lifted there is still a foot or two between the strap and saildrive... I guess my question is how close to it can I place the strap without damaging it.
You can place the rear sling far behind the saildrive, lift it onto the hull, drop it back down no more than 15 cm and then slide it forward until it meets the leg. That way it goes above the propeller onto the hull, which apart from the risk of the sling slipping aft should be ok.
If you do lift the sling too far in the wrong place and end up lifting the boat by the saildrive leg or propeller, the saildrive and engine can tear out of the boat, flood it instantly and it will be totaled with the insurance rightly asking why it was done this way.
Someone here had this happen in 2018, although on a smaller boat where engine and saildrive merely got damaged: https://www.bavariayacht.org/forum/index.php/topic,2298.msg14814.html