Hello. I have an older (original model, I believe) Wilderness Systems Sealution poly kayak. I have several canoe/kayak wheeled carts that do an adequate job of allowing me to hand tow the kayak to the launch point. However, none of them seem to do a very good job of staying tightly fastened to the kayak while it is upside down on my roof rack. The main issue seems to be the fit near the “V” near the end of the boat. What I really want to find is a folding cart that I can strap to the kayak when I take it out of storage at my home, roll it to the car, hoist it on to the roof rack, unload it at the parking spot, and roll it to the launch site without mucking around with the cart. At that point, I want to be able to fold the cart and stow it on one of the hatches. Anyone have candidate items to fit this need? Thanks!
I don’t leave my cart on my kayak when it’s loaded on the roof. Doesn’t seem safe or practical, and there would be more air turbulence with the cart sticking up. I have one SOT kayak that is fairly flat bottomed, so I load it sitting right side up on the padded cross bars. My other SOT kayak has a very pronounced V keel. I load it right side up and then flip it over onto the padded cross bars. I wouldn’t be able to load either kayak onto my rack using my hitch mounted T-loader with a cart attached to the kayak.
I also wouldn’t want to leave a cart attached to a kayak on the roof of my car. I mean they’re just not designed for that and what makes a cart useful for a variety of different boats makes it unlikely to be a very secure fit on any particular one.
The thought of a cart becoming a projectile also discourages me and really, how long does it take to strap or unstrap a kayak from a cart?
I’ve used this cart and have left it attached to the boat from time to time while on the vehicle:
https://www.rei.com/product/738003/quantum-engineering-stern-wheels-cart
The cart goes under the stern of the boat, so a downside is that you are lifting more of the weight of the boat than one which goes more center under the boat would. Plus side is is firmly attaches, so won’t get knocked out of alignment (something that seems to happen with many of the center-kayak carts) and is small enough that it fits in the hatch of many kayaks for storage.
I’m impressed… I always take as much weight off the kayak before I heft it up to the roof rack. That and I don’t want to have anything chaffing the finish that isn’t necessary.
I use a cart similar to this one. It fits in the middle of the yak. We rig two straps and “cross” them when rigging. We have taken wheels off (pins) and stowed it below the hatches, but usually just strap it on top of the kayak when paddling if portage or long take outs , etc. are expected (very rare) .
We also never load them on the roof racks upside down. The straps, bungees, etc often tick against the vehicle roof or they just don’t fit the cradles that way. Put covers over the cockpits to keep rain, critters out and seats in. Use the heavy covers with straps not light weight nylon. Unsupported nylon thumps, thumps, thumps, thumps, down the road.
@Peter-CA said:
I’ve used this cart and have left it attached to the boat from time to time while on the vehicle:
https://www.rei.com/product/738003/quantum-engineering-stern-wheels-cartThe cart goes under the stern of the boat, so a downside is that you are lifting more of the weight of the boat than one which goes more center under the boat would. Plus side is is firmly attaches, so won’t get knocked out of alignment (something that seems to happen with many of the center-kayak carts) and is small enough that it fits in the hatch of many kayaks for storage.
Thanks for actually providing an answer to my question. I’ll look into that item further.
To everyone who told me that I shouldn’t roof top my kayak without removing a cart that is insecurely attached: no kidding! I thought that my post was sufficiently clear in asking for recommendations for a cart that was sufficiently secure to do that safely. If there are “none”, then I would have thought that would have been the best reply…
Thanks for actually providing an answer to my question. I’ll look into that item further.
To everyone who told me that I shouldn’t roof top my kayak without removing a cart that is insecurely attached: no kidding! I thought that my post was sufficiently clear in asking for recommendations for a cart that was sufficiently secure to do that safely. If there are “none”, then I would have thought that would have been the best reply…
Well if you have seen things some people do at times not just in paddling arena you would know people were just trying to help.
@samou812 said:
Thanks for actually providing an answer to my question. I’ll look into that item further.
To everyone who told me that I shouldn’t roof top my kayak without removing a cart that is insecurely attached: no kidding! I thought that my post was sufficiently clear in asking for recommendations for a cart that was sufficiently secure to do that safely. If there are “none”, then I would have thought that would have been the best reply…
In my case I have looked at quite a few kayak carts and have never seen one that looked as if it could be stable while attached to a car topped kayak at highway speeds. But I haven’t seen absolutely everything the market has to offer and the one @Peter-CA mentions certainly looks like it might fit the bill.
I can only hope you’ll find a way to forgive me for even suggesting that leaving a cart attached is typically not within their design criteria.
Why not pad the cart you have to fit your kayak well? Some creative use of pipe insulation should do. Then strap that sucker on your kayak to keep it put. You may find you need to anchor it to fixed points on the kayak, not just a ‘belly strap’ or two.
All the kayak carts I’ve ever seen are very ill-fitting. Same goes for canoe carts, for that matter. If you want the cart’s connection to the boat to be nice and secure, I’d suggest having two lines (one on each side of the cart) extend to one end of the boat, where they’d attach to a basket of your own design that cups over the end of the boat (if I were doing this, I’d sew together a basket made of heavy canvas, with sturdy loops for the rope connections). Then have two more lines (again, one on each side of the cart) extending in the opposite direction and equipped with padded metal hooks that grip the coaming (again, if it were up to me, I’d build the hooks myself so they “fit” nicely at the place where they wrap around the rim). Cinch those four lines nice and tight, and include a pair of “belly straps” around the boat at the cart location, and you’ll be set. The cart would still wobble a bit on the hull, enough to probably scuff the finish during long-distance drives, unless you provided an exceptionally good custom fit for that particular boat, but it would be totally secure in all the ways that matter during hand transport.
It just occurs to me that if you lack the tools or skills to make proper hooks for attaching to the coaming, it would be just as good, if less convenient, to “lasso” the coaming with a loop at the end of each of the ropes that would attach there. You could even use a single rope instead of two, and run that rope all the way around the far side of the coaming, with the two ends attaching to opposite sides of the cart. That would provide a little less security against right-to-left wobble of the cart, so two individual “lassos” would be better.
Needless to say (but I’m saying it), you would need to know just a few basic knots to make this work.
Seriously, I can’t imagine that it would take as much as two minutes to strap on the cart if you used a custom setup as described here, and therefore see no advantage in going to the effort to customize the fit so perfectly that it pays to leave it on the boat while car-topping. That seems like icing on the cake that a person could do without, but if it were me, the rather minor amount of effort it would take to make the modifications described would be worth it if I needed to use the cart a lot, or for long distances.
seems that from my experience it would take me longer to secure cart on the kayak for road travel once than it takes me to drop it on the cart twice a lash it on. Then again my cart doesn’t have to be disassembled to go into my vehicles.