@SpaceSputnik said: @Celia thanks for the pointers.
Up there I can manage without a ladder. I can step on on top of the rear tire and pull myself up which gives me a lot of reach for tying it down.
A two or three step stool (Lowes or H.depot) would be better than balancing on the tire. Being tired after a long paddle, wind, sun, and rain are all factors that can make that tire position hazardous. I broke a wrist on the boat ramp just slipping on some slime from a standing position.
PS…at 63 the doc said they’d fix it. If I was 73 they’d just set it and not worry about range of motion.
You can often find used racks on craigslist. You want a rack that requires vehicle-specific clips that attach the rack to your vehicle…then you can order clips for a Prelude if the ones that come with the rack don’t fit. Looking at the Thule and Yakima sites you need to go with Yakima since Thule no longer sells parts for your Prelude. I suggest that you call Yakima and talk it over. I think you will appreciate having a proper solid rack for transporting your boat.
@Celia said:
Get the proper shaped foam blocks for under the boat. They are cheap and a whole lot stickier. Pool noodles will not compress as well or stay put, more likely to roll around at highway speeds.
Pool noodles will work. We used them on the trailer for a year or so. They were not a good installation and as Celia said they moved around especially if the boat wasn’t tied down properly. Another problem is that the foam is not UV protected and degrades in the sun. You get little pieces all over. Note the trailer pink foam in the attached picture. The covered foam Velcro secured bar covers, grey under the kayak, are a better deal for covering the bars is you wanted to avoid the “square” foam blocks. I use them on the Forester for about two years before use wears them out.
When loading alone I use and extender bar, PVC pipe sand spike from beach fishing, to load the kayak on the truck. Then lift the rear up the two step stool. With and assistant I can roll it up onto the truck.
Thank you. It helps if the viewer doesn’t stand too close. Varnish takes a beating loading and unloading and logs and oysters, etc. It’s all character.
Yes, I did, thanks. I think I need to cool off the spending for the time being. I have a few options already with the existing gear, plus if it gets too annoying I can always hoddog it and put it between the seats in the van and tie down the tailgate. The van doesn’t have center consoles (and I appreciated that multiple times in the past) so it can swallow 10’ leaving 4 outside which is not too bad.
Thank you. It helps if the viewer doesn’t stand too close. Varnish takes a beating loading and unloading and logs and oysters, etc. It’s all character.
Overstreet: did you opt for the wrist surgery? Broke mine at 58 (knocked the end off the right distal radius when I fell while ice skating.) I chose to go for the surgery to screw the parts back together and have not regretted it. Have regained over 95% of the range of motion of the wrist now after working very hard at PT. Never bothers me paddling at all.
SpaceSputnik: Your kayak has the same handles every other sea kayak does, toggles on the end. Trust me, you will get the hang of loading it. Any unfamiliar load feels awkward until you get used to it. Though a 55 pound boat will take more adjustment than lighter ones. But you can probably guess whey I got rid of all my kayaks that were heavier than 45 pounds.
Also, best to carry it upside down for a number of reasons. Though it is not easy to load that way unless you use my “head inside the cockpit” method. When I load boats any other way I flip them over once I get them up on the rack.
@willowleaf said:
Overstreet: did you opt for the wrist surgery? Broke mine at 58 (knocked the end off the right distal radius when I fell while ice skating.) I chose to go for the surgery to screw the parts back together and have not regretted it. Have regained over 95% of the range of motion of the wrist now after working very hard at PT. Never bothers me paddling at all.
Sure did. They did it a week later. Similar kind of break. Got it done here in Jacksonville. A lot scarier from the table, those OR rooms. I’ve built many ORs but being the patient is more difficult. I like to get the “I don’t care shot…” in pre-op. Then three months later in Ruskin, 200 miles south, when in for my knee that ortho doc looked at the wrist and said he could do better. Just like carpenters. My work’s better than yours. The patched up wrist is generally better than the other one, less pain nd stronger. I play a little more carefully these days.
No access to the trunk though. I might try bow backwards next time so it’d be higher at the back. Loading and unloading is fairly easy using a blanket over the roof approach.
You can make things a bit safer by attaching the block to the boat with a strap. It works better with ones that have a groove opposite the vee. That way the block can’t just slip out and cause the straps to go loose. I had this happen quite a few years ago on a bumpy forest road in Algonquin. The boat scratched the hell out of the car’s roof.
@Sparky961 said:
You can make things a bit safer by attaching the block to the boat with a strap. It works better with ones that have a groove opposite the vee. That way the block can’t just slip out and cause the straps to go loose. I had this happen quite a few years ago on a bumpy forest road in Algonquin. The boat scratched the hell out of the car’s roof.
Great advice, thanks. These blocks have a groove and a cutout for a roof rack with the material still left in it.
My only comment is that I would try to get the blocks and the strap for each in the same place, so the strap is above the block. Or go to what Sparky suggested which would make that happen. I have seen people manage to do some interesting things to plastic hulls in high heat, more so than they were going to be able to pop out again. Lining up the top and the bottom of the attachment point reduces that risk.
As to being able to open the trunk, I have had one or another sports related reason (road bikes before paddling) to have no use for other a station wagon or hatch since my first car that was a sedan went to a new owner in 1978. So getting into a sedan trunk is not an issue I have faced for most of my adult life. But — if you got a couple of basic plastic bins to hold your messier gear, they would fit in the back seat fine and wouldn’t leave drips or sand all over everything. And would be accessible without using the trunk.
That said, even with a hatch you will find that the sequence of loading and unloading stuff related to paddling develops a rhythm of its own out of necessity. Don’t worry too much about that.
Yeah, strapping the blocks to the hull is about the only option. This car has a tiny roof with a sunroof so that doesn’t leave me much room to play with block positioning. In addition the headspace is non existent ( so moving the front strap you see in the picture more forward interferes with my head.
Trunk access is not a big deal, just piling stuff into the seats works fine. I can also put the rear seat down and climb into the trunk if needs be.
@SpaceSputnik said:
Seems to work ok on the Prelude with just foam blocks!
No access to the trunk though. I might try bow backwards next time so it’d be higher at the back. Loading and unloading is fairly easy using a blanket over the roof approach.
That’s a tough car on which to provide secure attachment, but put some additional thought into that front tie-down. The way you have it, the front end of the boat is completely unrestrained in terms of back-and-forth movement. To see what I mean, grab the bow of your kayak and move it back and forth by hand, and you’ll watch that strap simply slide through the handle loop as the bow of the boat moves. Using two separate ropes, on on each side, would be far better (and make the same improvement at the rear if there are two tie-down points at the back of your car). Then the back-and-forth movement would only be as great as what’s allowed by those few inches of length of the lines for your carry handle. You can reduce side-to-side movement even more by tying a bridle to the hull of the boat instead of tying to the carry handle.
You’ve got the same problem with your center tie-downs doing almost nothing to prevent sideways movement, but there’s not such an easy solution in that case.
Thanks. I can certainly use two straps at the front. Not sure about the back, but I haven’t looked if there are good hooking points except the central tow hook, maybe there are.
The reason I don’t use the twist method is, first, it simply increases the distance between that “fixed point in space” that is created by the twist and the actual location of the boat, and that only makes the uncontrollable degree of wig-wag that much larger. The effect is the same as lengthening the lines of the carry handle to which that strap is attached. Second, when driving in a prolonged and powerful cross wind, the twists have a tendency to creep (at least that’s true with something having as much windage as a canoe), and since a strap can typically only be tightened from one end, twisting it in the middle is a poor substitute for having two separate tie-downs which can be tensioned individually. Two straps would definitely be better, but straps are so inappropriate here that that’s as far as I go in talking about them. Using rope in as many lengths as is practical is just so much easier, cheaper and more effective for tie-downs not associated with the rack itself that I don’t pretend to find good things to say about them. They are substitutes that work less well and do nothing in addition to that except appeal to people who have the idea that it’s hard to learn knots.
The patched up wrist is generally better than the other one, less pain nd stronger. I play a little more carefully these days.