ok, right now i’ve got a 12r (ww kayak 12 feet long wedged inside my camper/rv). Picked it up from the pyranha warehouse in TN. I took several days of lessons with the new boat in TN/NC (noli/french broad)
and my buddy ran shuttle. When it was time to go home I knew it was too long to transport on the back vertically on my rack so I had a buddy help me put it in the camper to get it home in WV (it barely fits, we scoot it in over the counter and remove faucet handle on sink). Now I’m waiting for the rain to stop so I can recruit a neighbor to help me get it out of the camper.
Tdaniel: I had exactly the dilemma you faced (getting a kayak inside an RV) in mind when I sought out the one I bought last month which is a custom built “toy hauler” motorhome. Built out of a Penske 16’ x 8’ box van, I could carry any of my kayaks (even the 18’ Greenland) inside the camper (I measured and there is an extra 2’ of space into the cab pass through). The bed is a Murphy bed that folds up against the passenger side wall (not as bulky as it looks – I had two mattresses stacked on it in the photo since I had bought a new foam one and was awaiting a neighbor taking the innerspring it arrived with.) And the back 2/3rd of the floor is vinyl tile and has eyebolts set into it and on adjacent walls to secure any “toys”. Most of my boats will also fit under the bed frame even if it is lowered.
RV has all I need to hit the road. There is a flush toilet and full shower behind the curtain beside the bed and it has both solar power and an Onan generator.
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That looks great!
nice set up!
Dear Board,
I didn’t do this myself but I was intimately involved with a sale to a gentleman from Texas.
Several years ago I posted on the local Craiglist a Grumman Sportboat Canoe with a trailer and 4HP Yamaha outboard. Days went by with no interest and then one day I received an email from a fellow in Waco TX asking asking if the canoe was still available? I said yes, and he said he was interested and we began a phone and email exchange.
He decided he wanted to see it and on a Thursday morning he said, “I’ll see you Friday night.” I thought, “Yeah, sure, whatever,” but was polite and gave him explicit directions to my house. I got home from work Friday and one hour later he was standing in my driveway.
To say I was stunned would be putting it mildly. But I showed him the canoe and even started and ran the outboard for him in my driveway. He said, “It’s all you said it was in your ad, I’ll take it!” We had a beer or two and agreed to meet the next morning to transfer the paperwork.
We met right on time, he handed me Dead Presidents, and we went inside to do the paperwork. The registration and title on the trailer, and the title for the boat, were transferred to his name and off he went that fine Saturday morning.
Late afternoon on Sunday I got a call from the buyer saying he was home in Waco safe and sound and he was looking forward to getting his grandson out in the boat as soon as he could.
When I met him that Friday evening in my driveway we chatted up a bit and I found out he was a retired long haul trucker. I work as a rate and billing specialist for a heavy haul trucking company so I kind of knew what he could do, having learned his background. He was an older man than me, and he knew how to get the job done.
He did 3000 miles in less than 4 days! I hope to God he is still enjoying that Sport Boat!
Regards,
Tim Murphy
Harrisburg, PA
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I went 1000 miles round trip in one day. I thought I was crazy but seeing some replies here iam quite sane after all. See I new I wasn’t crazy.
I live in central Nebraska, found my canoe in Colorado Springs, about a 6 hour drive one way. A fuel pump going out on the way home turned it into a bit longer road trip than I expected!
About 6 months later my buddy was looking for a canoe when I saw a Bell Northstar in starlight layup on ebay. After some joking, then some serious looking, he ended up winning the bid for the canoe, carbon fiber paddles, vests, dry bags, and some other gear, all barely used. We estimated the value at over 3 grand new, my buddy won the bid at $820! We made the road trip the next weekend, 21 1/2 hours of driving one way. We left Saturday at noon and got back Tuesday about 6:30. We did take breaks to paddle on a mountain lake in the Cascades and again at Twin Falls, and overall it was a pretty damn fun trip! I still laugh about it, but we’d both do it again. And it’s a great boat!
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Those long haul truckers are amazing. I bought that yellow truck motorhome from the builder in Salt Lake City, Utah, but by the time we worked out the deal we were in the Covid surge. I’m in Pittsburgh and normally I would relish a road trip adventure and would have shanghaied a buddy for co-driving and jumped on a plane in a heartbeat to fetch it. But with infections rising nobody I knew cared to travel and I was queasy about flying exposure myself and not looking forward to solo driving 1800 plus miles.
So I checked local Craigslist and found a guy advertising that he would deliver cars and motorhomes cross country. Turned out to be a long haul trucker with little work due to the pandemic. He agreed to do it for $500 and I snagged him a last minute plane ticket for $200 that got him there in 7 hours… I expected he would take several days to dribe back — since the motorhome had everything he would need to pull over and camp out. but he got to SLC early evening on a Wednesday and delivered the truck to me in Pittsburgh mid Friday morning! 1800 miles in 37 hours. Said he only took two 2-hour naps and ate while driving.
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Reading these stories makes us all feel better. Pity people that do not have passion, especially passion for boats.
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I agree. These stories are delightful.
I love this thread, and as a side benefit it makes me feel totally reasonable. 
And now I’m also wondering how many people on here have - knowingly or unknowingly - purchased a boat owned at some point by someone else on here.
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Yes. I’ve bought from and sold to p.nutters.
I have thought about that too (who owned and may yet own a particular boat).
One of my favorite books as a child was Holling Clancy Holling’s “Paddle to the Sea” (I still have a copy) which follows the adventures of a small carved wooden canoe with paddler that a young Indian boy makes and launches from the headwaters of a lake that feeds Lake Superior. As the toy makes its way through the Great Lakes (and the book provides illustrated history and geography of the regions it passes through) various people find and rescue and refurbish it and add their names or stories to the information carved into the hull before sending it on its way. I have considered adding something similar to the insides of my boats as they pass through my armada.
Though occasionally recognizing a boat can be a little chilling. I discovered a guy selling a batch of nice touring and sea kayaks (Neckys, Perceptions, Daggers, Prijons) locally a few years ago and realized when I went to look at them that they and all the paddles and gear were from the livery of a local guide I had known for many years who ran groups trips and taught paddling. The seller was a “picker” type who said he had picked them up cheap at some kind of “estate sale” and knew little about them.
The guide who had owned the boats (a quirky fellow with whom I had paddled several times over a span of a few decades and who had been active in one of my long time outdoor clubs) had suddenly vanished from the scene the year before and all I could find out was someone told me he had been upset over the break up of a long relationship (and I knew he had recently lost a beloved dog to cancer), and someone else told me they had heard he had died. He had an uncommon name and I was unable to track any information on him despite deep web searches. This can often mean that there was a troubling departure.
I still run across boats I recognize from his fleet here 10 years later turning up for sale – he had at least 30 of them. I hope that he just got fed up and moved out West after selling off the assets and didn’t come to some tragic end.
Update: Turns out a little digging caused me to discover I had been mis-spelling his last name. I remembered his fiance’s name and was able to find a mention of the two of them that lead to correcting the error. A new search turned up that the guide did, indeed, pass away locally in 2013 at just 49, only a few months after I had last seen him. No news stories of accidents linked to the name, and the obituary archives had no sympathy posts which is often a bad sign that the family wanted to keep things quiet.
Having lost a few dear friends to suicide, this looks sadly familiar.
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Same here. In fact I sold one last week. And, two in Spring 2019. The classifieds are great for buying/selling - especially so when we price the kayaks right.
I know someone who, two weeks ago, just drove almost a thousand miles for a…wait for it…Pungo 120! Yes, that’s how little inventory there is for boats these days.
You know what? That’s kind of great. If you want a Pungo, at least go all in!
I’d drive that far for a woman, and have many times. Not sure about a Pungo.
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What if it were a really pretty Pungo?
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I think pretty Pungo is an oxymoron.
I really enjoy my Pungo but the pretty title went to my Stellar S18S.
The girl who bought it traveled from Pennsylvania to SC.
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Abought 10 years ago, my wife and I drove from Cleveland Ohio to somewhere in Conneticut to pick up a kevlar 25yr. anniversay Mad River Malicite for our son. He’s a top gun, now Lutenent(?) Commander naval Aviator. It was a big request from him to us but we made it a mini vacation. The guy who sold it was about 80 yrs. old.Greek. The most memerable part of the trip was that his house was 200+ years old and that the Revaloutionary War soldiers marched past his house for Years…
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