The next kayak cart

I'm planning to build another kayak cart.  This one will have an aluminum frame that can be configured as a small, portable cart for camping, and as a large, too-big-to-fit-in-the-yak cart for hauling the boat from the parking lot to the shore.  The larger size should be useful for navigating places like the small hill at Eckley where a wider wheel base and a longer frame might add enough stability to keep whole thing from rolling (which can be a problem at Eckley). 

 

Aluminum-frame folding golf bag cart

I'm hoping that I can get by with only the existing frame parts and some stainless steel fasteners.  The wheels (like the ones on my old cart) are some kind of dense foam material that seems to work well on concrete, sand, and gravel, but isn't likely to be long-lasting.  I might try adding bike-tire skins to the wheels so that the outer foam part won't wear out before the inner plastic rim gives out.

The frame of the cart shown in the photo is aluminum with some steel parts and some nylon parts, and with plain steel fasteners.  The wheels are detachable, so if all else fails I will at least have a spare pair of wheels.

Golf bag kayak cart again

The kayak cart is beginning to look like a small boat trailer.

This is the latest version of the same golf-bag cart that I've been using for a couple of years.  Now it has scrap wood supports made to fit the bottom of the kayak, bike-tire friction pads, wooden cleats, and nylon cord loops to hook bungees onto.  It seems to be easier to use this way, although it's heavier and bulkier than before.

 The long handle is more of a nuisance than a help so I'm going to cut that down next, or modify it so that it doesn't drag on the ground when I'm trying to navigate the hill next to the beach at Eckley.

Modified Yakima roof rack

I wanted to keep the kayak from sliding on the roof rack, and I wanted to make it easier to tie down two kayaks--if I ever had a chance to do that--so I tried a modified bar on my Yakima rack.

The roof rack modified for the kayak.

All of the wood is either fir or pine, some of which was already hanging around, and a couple of pieces from the cull bin at Home Depot. The horizontal pad is pipe insulation glued on with Goop; I don't expect this to last a long time, since the insulation isn't all that tough and the Goop-to-wood adhesion doesn't seem to be very good.  The vertical pad--not really a pad, but a high-friction surface to make the kayak stay put--in the middle is rubber from an inner tube, glued on with Titebond II. 

The two clips to the right of the vertical part are PVC conduit brackets, cut and then melted slightly with a heat gun, that ought to be able to clamp a one-piece paddle to the rack.

The thing on the left side is removable.  It was meant to be a load stop, and to provide a place to wrap the lashing straps.  I haven't used it yet, since I haven't come up with a convenient way to lock it onto the load bar.

Homemade hatch cover for the Looksha Sport LV

The kayak has a hatch aft of the cockpit, but there was no hatch cover, and I couldn't find a replacement.

Hatch cover number one.

The inside of cover #1.

 The first hatch cover was made from an exercise ball that I bought at Urban Ore to make into a flotation bag.  It has a skinny inner tube glued into the rim of the cover; the tube was cut to a bit more than the circumference of the hatch, one end was glued shut, and the other end has an NRS air valve.  (The valve is glued into a piece of vinyl tubing, which is jammed onto a PVC hose barb, which is glued to the end of the inner tube.) 

The idea is that when the inner tube is inflated the cover tightens around the hatch rim and seals it.  It seems to work, but the tube has a slow leak and the cover becomes loose after a few minutes.

I made a second cover from part of an air mattress that I had cut up to make a flotation bag.

The second cover on the hatch.

The inside, with a temporary coroplast insert.

It has another inner tube glued into it, and this time I checked the tube carefully for leaks first.  It still needs a valve (the white thing on the tube is a hose clamp that doesn't work too well), and the edges have been left untrimmed to make it easier to wrap a bungee cord around it as a temporary fix.

(Update, October 2012:  The hatch cover I've been using the last few months is a sheet of 1/4" marine plywood shaped to the hatch and covered with a rubbery plastic material that's held on with a a loop of elastic cord around the outside.  This has an 8" plastic deck plate in the middle, which makes it easy to get stuff out of the hatch from the cockpit without removing the whole cover.

This setup is heavy [and kind of ugly] and I'm thinking of making a fiberglass cover to replace the plywood, and adding a fiberglass rim to it to secure the rubbery material, which is difficult to glue to anything.)

(Later update: a fiberglass cover would have been fairly easy to do, maybe with part of a refrigerator door gasket, or a car door gasket, to make it somewhat water tight.  I don't really like working with epoxy and fiberglass, so I might try a neoprene cover made the same way as a neoprene spray skirt.  I can document and post it here if I think there's any interest.)  

Kayak cart 2.0

This is the second kayak cart I've made - the first one wasn't as easy to use, and the wheels were too small to be really practical.

This is a folding golf bag cart with some of the extra things cut off of it, and some bungee cords added.  It works (and I've used it) as it is, but it would work better with some tweaking.

I bought the cart from Urban Ore in Berkeley, CA, for $5.  The bungees with snaps on one end and hooks on the other were bought as a kit at Home Depot (off the clearance table) for about $2.  The 'regular' bungee used on the cart's handle was just hanging around the house.

The bungees attached to the wheel supports are connected around the kayak to one side of the cockpit, and the cart's handle is bungeed (isn't it annoying when people verb nouns?) to the kayak near the bow or the stern, whichever is closest.  The rest of the gear is piled into the kayak, and then I can push or pull the kayak from either end. 

One of the drawbacks to the cart's current state is that the kayak can roll relative to the cart, and when I try to pull the kayak down the weedy little gravel path from the paved walk to the beach at Eckley the kayak tends to twist to one side and then the whole thing falls over, which is annoying, albeit not a great big deal.  And I'm not sure the golf bag cart is meant to hold the weight of the kayak (50 or 60 pounds).  On the plus side, it has a handy gizmo in the handle for storing a couple of golf balls.  Yay!

When I get to the beach at Eckley I shove the cart behind a big piece of driftwood and hope that nobody notices it.  This strategy works, so far, and I can load the kayak back on the cart once I'm done paddling without having to walk back to the car first.  (Update: last Sunday some misguided person swiped the bungie cords off the cart while I was out.  Now I'm going to leave the cart in the car.)  With cart v1.0 it was possible to take the cart apart and stash it in the kayak - but it never seemed to be worth the bother.

To do:  there is a Y-shaped plastic things near the middle of the unfolded cart that needs to be cut down, then make wider, and given a 'sticky' surface that won't allow the kayak to slide easily.  I can't get rid of the plastic thing altogether because it's needed for the unfolded handle to lock into place.