Mid March! … Don’t forget the Flonase , shorts and sun screen.
Cheapest option would be to bring some extra long cam straps (15 footers) and buy a couple of the hollow core closed cell pool noodles from a discount store when you get there.
If you want a more permanent option, Malone sells inflatable roof rack sets that are way more compact than foam blocks. I have one and took it with me when I flew from the USA to UK with one of my folding kayaks. The tiny stuff sack for the kit, which includes two inflatable “cross bars” and all the straps you need for fastening it to the vehicle, fit easily in a side pocket of my bag and it protected my rental car from scuffing. Photo of the boat on the rental below. (Rental was a Citroen C6, great car I’d buy in a heartbeat if they sold them in the US. It did have lateral roof bars which gave me a solid attachment point for the boat itself.) Third pic is the “exploded view” of what I packed in one bag and the H2O kit is in the lower left, both inflation tubes rolled around the cam straps and the little stuff sack for them in between.
Mine is the the $70 lighter weight version (all my folding travel kayaks are under 44 pounds) but you might need the heavier $100 version (higher inflation). I notice Sea to Summit has a sale right now on their similar version, marked down from $100 to $49.99 (throw in a pair of cam straps to up an order over $50 to get free shipping). Link here.
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I didn’t see anyone mention a dry bag. Have fun!
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I’m interested but what happens if you get a slow leak of air while underway?
Why am I so phobic about anything inflatable, is this normal? 
I guess it’s because I have returned “more than two” inflatable mattresses to Costco. These are a great solution for movers when waiting for your furniture to be delivered but mine never hold air for more two or three nights. They cost over a hundred dollars so we always return them but then do it again thinking we were just unlucky!
Also we lived in a big fancy Contessa Class A for a few years and it came with a sleep number bed and half way across the country my husband’s side lost all its air. He was so angry he threw it in a dumpster at the Flyin J! 
Have we ever owned anything that holds air? No
But I see people with things that have lasted for years.
Yea, I noticed on the build sheet when we bought the Rv that the bed was a couple thousand dollars!
It was just a plastic raft with a little fountain pump motor and a fancy mattress cover! 
OMG talk about flashbacks, him laying on that plywood and I was a couple feet above him on my half.
We like natural Thallay rubber (100%, no hybrids) latex 6” three ply foam and it lasts decades.
Arizona Premium Mattress if anyone is ever interested (delivered Fed x compressed in a box)
Home, camping, boats, custom sizing best mattress on earth
Kapungo…this is just a reminder that we would like an after action report to let us know how it went. It was 40s to 70s last week in Lakeland with all day rain. March should be better.
I have patch kits for all my folder boats (they all have inflatable sponsons within the skin). If one springs a leak. the boat stays assembled since the skin and rigid frame create the structure. The sponsons on all but my sit on top are just to tighten the skin and refine the hull shape. And there are multiple sponson tubes so loss of one doesn’t have a major impact if it occurs when you are paddling – it can slow the boat down and make it not track straight but you won’t sink.
The glue-and-patch kits only take a few minutes to do a fix and I also carry special tape that is so adhesive that it can be applied underwater yet creates a solid seal. I only have that for real emergencies because it’s thick and ugly and the color matched patch materials that come in the kits make a more discreet patch.
My oldest folder (2004 Pakboat Puffin) has 4 sponsons and an inflatable seat that all still hold air with no leaks. Even the Feathercraft Java sit-on-top tandem, which depends on the inflatables for most of its structure, has the vinyl inflation tubes inserted into sturdy cordura nylon canvas compartments, where they are protected from abrasion and puncture. In 21 years of using boats with inflatable components, I have only had to patch twice, both due to my own stupidity: the first one was from leaving the boat in the hot sun with all the sponsons inflated, which caused the air to expand and rupture a seam (I was able to repair it and it is still in the boat). The second time I assembled the seat frame incorrectly in my ex’s Pakboat the second time we set it up and caused a metal part to puncture the tube. Took us ten minutes to patch it with the kit and it was good to go.
I’m surprised you report having problems with inflatable mattresses. I had a twin size on the day bed in my guest room for years and at one point my mom visited and slept on it for over 2 weeks and it never deflated. I’ve used a queen sized one (branded by Serta, I think) in my “glamping” tent for years as well and never found that it lost air noticeably. I bought the twin 25 years ago and the queen probably 12 years ago. Maybe quality has declined since then.
My Klymit camping air mattress has also held up for 8 years and never failed me, even after sleeping on it every night for a week or more.
I suspect having two people sleeping on an inflatable mattress creates more stress on the seams, especially when it is inflated to be very firm. There is also a varying level of weakness depending on what sort of sealing process is used for seams: heat bonding of properly coated fabric or sold vinyl seems to be strongest; glued seams can be prone to failure depending on the type of blue (H66 is best, essentially melting the material together.) Cheap coated fabric intended for tarps or rain wear can fail when glued or even heat bonded if the wrong coating material is used. That’s because the coating loses its bond with the matrix fabric and peels off, failing the seam. Pakboat had a batch of sponsons and inflatable seats fail in one production run of their folders in 2007 due to their Asian supplier using the wrong material. The coating on the polyester fabric delaminated disastrously and the components leaked like sieves. They replaced them on warranty, but I ended up buying two used ones that the original owners had failed to have repaired (apparently they got them as wedding gifts and therefor never sent in a warranty card and were never notified of the warranty.) I got both boats very cheap and began making new sponsons for them (sheet vinyl from Joann Fabrics and glue and valves from diypackrafts.com.) Have yet to finish that – too many other projects and adventures have taken up my time since I bought them 5 years ago. But my research into that failure taught me a lot about the technology of inflatables’ structure and materials.
There is a liquid latex sealant that you can buy in a can that you pour into a mostly inflated item, then close the valve and tumble it around to coat the inside. It flows into any pinholes and fills them. It’s used by the military to reinforce marine inflatables like ship tenders and rafts.
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Thanks for the tip on the mattress source. I bought a “natural foam” mattress for the Murphy bed in my converted box van camper and have not liked it. I like good foam rubber mattresses but the one I got is single density and too firm on top, even when I added a cushiony mattress pad. It also sags when I fold up the frame vertically because it’s like a bag of jello, which makes it hard to latch the frame snug against the wall.
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He told me he makes mattresses for world class tennis and golfers that insist he ships them to their competitions around the world 
I haven’t found a better price but they are not inexpensive but oh so good. We have one on our bed that we have had fifteen years.
Yea I call my mattress return to Costco my “walk of shame.”
Was the rental company OK with you putting a kayak on the roof?
I am assuming we have moved back away from inflatable issues and back to the original topic lol. The place I am going to says they have some sort of rooftop setup and it is ok to take the kayaks to a launch. I am taking some straps as well.
I did not bother to ask them (they probably would have fussed about it, not understanding that my boat was made of soft materials and weighed just over 20 pounds.) The Pakboat is made of polyester cloth with an internal aluminum tubular frame and the inflatable “crossbars” in the Malone kit padded and lifted it off the roof surface. You can see if you look closely at the photo I posted that the boat didn’t contact the car itself. So there were no marks or damage to the vehicle. You can see in this photo that I have 3 straps around it, securing it to the rack. I was traveling during the trip on winding Yorkshire country roads, never going faster than about 30 mph, so I didn’t use a front backup line, but I did some paracord from the stern to the rear bumper to add wind stability.
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If you bring a wetsuit, a clothes hanger designed for hanging wet neoprene clothing is useful. It holds the front apart from the back to allow faster drying.
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In buggy areas I go with lightweight long pants and a long sleeve shirt that they can’t bite through. In areas where bugs are particularly bad a bugnet that you wear over a hat might be a good thing to have. Hopefully, bugs won’t be too horrible this early in the year.
I have been going to that area of Florida since I was a
small child because my grandparents retired there and so did my parents. The mosquitos seem almost non existent when I have visited compared to the 70s, 80s
We were in Clearwater for a year in 2017 and
I don’t recall having any problems and we don’t use bug spray (I would if they were a problem but avoid buggy places) I lived in Costa Rica years ago and they were so bad (and I had Dengue) that I have never gone back.