How do you mount/store your kayak?

Right side below blue outline box small square mountain / sun scene hit that it will let you upload picture.

Nothing fancy, just mounts on the wall of the garage.

The cars can stay outside, we get a new one every few years anyway….

Rest in the basement boathouse. Here’s a couple of them


Don’t store any kayaks; don’t own any.
Do store canoes; own a lot of them.
Here are how about 40 different canoes have been stored over the last 3 decades.
The count is now below 20; I think?

BOB



Top to bottom  Blackhawk Starship, Ariel, and Zephyr

Canoe sling system #4
June 2007 #3
June 2007
A beauty !Hemlock SRT
Blackhawk, Wenonah & Whitesell


Canoes & misc toys
Mad River Screamer in yellow


Part of the red boat fleet
Odyssey #3

A beauty !Hemlock SRT

P.S. Think I duplicated 2 photos; sorry about that!
What the heck; the red SRT, and the little, 11’7" Blackhawk are pretty enough to see twice…

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impressive (and I’m not a canoer)

lightest, heaviest?
longest, shortest?
best in WW, best flatwater(or fastest)?
most (count) by Manufacturer (& which)?
what are you getting next?
(I know not to ask favorite)

Heaviest has to be a Whitesell Piranha, if I exclude Chestnut Pal wood/canvas tandem I own.
Lightest would be a Bell Flashfire.
Shortest is a Blackhawk Shadow 11’6" or a Blackhawk Proem.
Have never owned a canoe over 17 foot in length; my wife and I went to solos for each decades ago.
My favorite ww solo was a Mohawk Probe 12 II.
The Bell Wildfire, and Mad River Guide are my favorite flatwater solos.
Fastest solos I ever had were the Dagger Sojourn, and a Mad
River Screamer.
I have owned more Blackhawks than any other brand. Also rans would be Mad River, Mohawk, Dagger, and Bell.
I no longer buy new canoes. I buy used “garage queens”, or boats I think I’ll enjoy restoring and paddling. Canoes in that category are too numerous to list.
My favorite canoe was 3 different canoes; (1) Curtis Dragonfly, (2) Swift SRT, and (3) Bell Wildfire in kevlar layup. All “regrettably” sold to finance other toys, wild women, Irish whiskey, etc

Pickup with camper shell, and side steps mounted

Category X (challenge to paddle boats) Blackhawk Proem, Perception HD-1, and Mad River Flashback.


That was fun…

BOB

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I have to find storage for at least 2 of my kayaks, one 17 feet and one 18 feet, no garage and my shed will not fit either of these but I do have a large crawl space under my house with 2 openings, I could slide the kayaks in there, if I do that how do I store them one their back w cockpit opening down or up and is that aa good idea, on boards , wrapped in something? I looked into a rack but it would be outside and the bay gets pretty windy, may lose the tarp and they can been seen from the street and this is a weekend house. so I am thinking under the house may be my best bet.

Crank 'em up, crank ‘em down.
Built the garage with a 12’ celling on the first floor originally for our motorhome. The height allowed me to build a couple of heavy duty racks for 1 or 2 kayaks each and the Mad River. Since then we’ve replaced the kayaks with much lighter solo canoes.

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I don’t usually store the Stratos on the boat but I think this was when I was rebuilding the rack it sits on so it was there temporarily


It normally lives here (usually covered)

Here is what i built 2 days ago. we have a boardwalk from the house to the garage and I have had the boats on sawhorses there all year. Kind of a good place to keep for loading on the car and out of the way. The 2 sets of horses took up a lot of space and were hard to mow under or rake leaves.

I was going to hang them from the rafters in the garage/barn but the more I thought about it more critters would find a home in them there than out in the cold.

I’m not too worried in storing them outside one advantage of having cheap boats.

Will stain the wood to match next summer.

I recently got a deal on Craig’s List for a couple of Harken Kayak Hoisters. I have to say, it’s a very nice system. The retail price of $150-ish would be tough to swallow, but it’s a quality system.

image

I was dead set on getting a “kit” kayak hoist system until I studied the components a bit and realized how it was set up, and that you can get your own components (typically with a much higher weight rating) for much less than the “kit” systems.

I used 4 single pulleys, 2 eye hooks, a 50’ 3/8" rope and 2 boat cleats for tie off. I already had the screws for mounting the pulleys and the two tie down straps I used. I would have used a double pulley but Home Depot didn’t have one rated over 50 lbs in stock.

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I’m with you. I got the Harken Hoisters for $30 each, so down around the price of hardware store-parts. But some folks are fine spending the money if they don’t have to figure out the DIY approach.

I got one of these:

RAD Sportz 125 lb. Capacity Kayak Canoe Lift Hoist Storage Rack-HWD630554 - The Home Depot

Carried by Home Depot so should be widely available for ~$22. Lowes has a similar one for about the same price, looks the same, different branding.

I installed it already and it seems to work fine.

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That HD system looks about the same price as buying the pieces yourself, hard to argue with that.

Does it seem like it will hold up over time?

It seems like it will be ok. The brake definitely works (and takes a little getting used to how to release it.) Most parts are metal, except for the pulleys (the actual wheels) are plastic. The rope, hooks and strap seem good quality.

They, of course, tell you not to use it over a car (I am sure their lawyers added that.) So once I lift the kayak up I add a set of straps for redundancy protection, since I actually park under it. I would have done that even if their instructions had not said anything. I also tie the rope off so I am not depending on the brake mechanism.

So far I am pleased with it, but I have not had it very long.

Here’s my simple, inexpensive A-Frame kayak rack. It holds 4-6 boats, depending on their size and the dimensions can be adjusted as necessary.
https://briannystrom.com/kayaking/tutorials/a-simple-a-frame-kayak-storage-rack/

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Man, wish I had that size garage, and “love” the looks of the mini camper. Who made that?
BOB

I’m going to hop in with a related storage question:

For those that store outside, do you wrap the boat individually in a tarp or made-for-the purpose cover, or just throw a tarp over the entire rack/storage device?

Wondering if one method or the other is better in terms of protection, potential mold build up etc. Back in the day I used to wrap each boat individually in blue tarp material, like wrapping a body…but I really didn’t put much thought into it as to whether leaving it more open to air circulation (put tarp over rack, like in Bryan’s picture) would be better.

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