Homemade Kayak Cart

[Monkeybrad]

It seems like more and more of us are buying canoes, kayak and other small watercraft to integrate into our geocaching so I thought I would pass along this tip. Even a lightweight kayak (Scoot's weighs 34 lbs.) is a pain to carry more than a couple of hundred yards, so I looked around and found a better way to transport our boats. There are several of these on the market, but most of them run about $100.00, so I looked at how they were made and came up with this one that you can make in less than half an hour with parts from your local home improvement store for around $30.00. I present "Monkeybrad's Magically-delicious Personal Watercraft Conveyor to the Stars" or as Scoot calls it, a homebuilt kayak cart:





Just take this little set of wheels and place on the bottom of aforementioned watercraft like so:



Then pull the straps up and attach them to anywhere convenient on your boat or just fasten them to each other over the top of the boat and you have a quick and easy way to transport you boat.



From the rear:




You can also use it to transport multiple boats if your stacking skills are up to the task:




So how do you make one of these beauties?

First you will need a few things:

1- 18" 2X4
2- 18" 2X2
2- 6" metal L brackets
2- lawnmower wheels, I used 7"
2- wheelaxle bolts (these will be with the wheels)
6- 1.5" lag bolts
1- FunNoodle (the kids swim toy)
2- bungee type straps I used 42" models
2 feet of webbing
8- 1.5" drywall screws
8- washers
6- 3" drywall screws
Some sort of heavy adhesive, I used liquid nails.

I picked up everything to make this at Lowe's and Walmart for about $30.00.

1. Center 2X2's on 2X4 base and attach with 3" screws.
2. Use lag bolts to secure metal brackets to bottom of 2X4.
3. Attach wheels to brackets using wheelaxle bolts.
4. Cut webbing to make loops to hold the bungee straps. Use 1.5" drywall screws and washers to attach them to the base. You can skip this and attach the bungees directly to the base if you like, but this method allows you access to your straps if you need them for something else, and it allows for easy replacement if one breaks. After attaching the loops fit bungee straps through them.
5. Flip the cart over and cut the FunNoodle to fit the 2X2 arms, use adhesive to attach FunNoodle pieces to the arms. At this point I also adhesived some 3mm foam to the crosspiece, but it is purely cosmetic, as was my choice of lime green noodle and yellow brackets.

There you go, your own Kayak Cart for around thirty bucks and less than twenty minutes of construction. You can personalize it in any way, I ended up with my pastel lemon-lime scheme because that was the only color FunNoodle I could find. For a more sedate cart us gray foam pipe insulation.

I hope this is helpful for some of you, my yak weighs in at about eighty pounds so I was looking for a better way to get it to the water in places that did not have a boat ramp. This works like a charm. If you place the cart about 3/4 of the way back on the boat you can get a nice balance that makes it effortless to lift and pull. The other nice thing is you can load your gear into the boat and only make one trip. Once you get to the water you can strap the cart on top of the yak, I am sure you could also build this to fold up and stow inside the boat, but I have lots of room in mine so I did not worry about that. On that same note, you can change any of the dimensions to get a custom fit for your boat. Mine was designed to handle my large sit-on-top kayak, my wife's standard kayak and our canoe. You may need to size up or down for your application.

I hope that some of you find this useful, there are many more elegant ways to solve this problem, but this one requires no specialized knowledge or crazy tools to construct.

[BigDaddyD]

You are one creative dude!!

[Sduck]

Very cool! I've been wanting a small boat like these - and now there's more gear involved - excellent!

[robertlipe]

Really nice instructions. Post this to instructables or make or such.

Bonus points if you get "adhesived" in print.

[Monkeybrad]

OK, time for an update...

Over time the cart has worked out pretty well, but I have run into a couple of issues. First, it needed larger tires, the little ones really did bog down in the terrain, many thanks to Southpaw for finding a pair of great pneumatic ones for me. The brackets proved sturdy enough for most trips, we found that if we loaded the cart with both yaks and all of the gear needed for a full day on the water, including big iced down cooler, they flexed too much and while they still worked it was less than optimal. So it was back to the drawing board, for version 2.0.

The first thing I decided was that I was going to have trouble finding "off the shelf" parts to accomplish what I really wanted, so I decided to learn how to fabricate my own parts and weld them together. This allowed me to build a much beefier frame without adding too much weight and it was something I wanted to learn how to do anyway. I reconstructed the frame from the original using a 18" piece of channel steel for the crossmember and two 9" pieces of 1/4" flat steel for the brackets. I ground the bracket ends to round the corners before using the drill press to make a 5/8" hole for the wheel axle. I then welded these pieces to the cross member to create the basic frame. I then cut two more 9" pieces of the 1/4" flat steel and drilled two 1/4" holes in each end. I welded the pieces to the top of the crossmember to mount the boat supports to. I liked using the 18" 2X2 wood pieces for the top runners from the original design so I stuck with that using 1/4" lag bolts to mount them to the metal supports. I then mounted the wheels and spot weld the bolts in place. A quick coat of left over Jeep paint, four strap mounts and some pipe insulation and it was ready to go.

Adding the larger pneumatic tires made a huge difference when pulling it over rough terrain and the heavier frame means I can carry much more weight. I stress tested it by loading both kayaks, the canoe, a cooler, our gear and my niece and it pulled just fine, although I would not want to pull that load up a hill. This design is about twice as heavy as my original, but most of that weight increase is in the tires. One plus is that even with the increased weight, it still floats, once again due to the tires.

So here are the pictures:

The old cart and the new cart


A closer shot to compare the two


On the little yak


Under the big yak, actually mounted


And a side view of the mounted cart, with the obligatory Jeep picture


I am thrilled with the way this one is working out thus far and I am glad that I finally got around to learning how to make some of this stuff in metal. Of course, this one does have some trade-offs, it took most of a day for me to fabricate and assemble the pieces and it cost more than thirty bucks to build, on the other hand it should last forever and it is a much better design. Good news for me but bad news for Scoot, now that I have two different models, I won't have to haul both of the boats every time. The first design works very well for fairly light boats, and with the addition of larger wheels it remains very serviceable, but I am very proud of the new one and I am looking forward to the weather getting better so I can take full advantage of it.

I am still on the lookout for design improvements and I will keep you posted if I make any major changes. I think I really will build a folding one next time, maybe out of a lighter metal...

[Team Wheaties]

Way cool and excellent work. It's a shame that Scoot makes you store them out near Sledgehammer and carry them all the way home.

The transom of the yak is just screaming for a GFF logo

Inspirational effort

[4Fitzs]

Hi,, I was really glad to find your instructions for this cart ,been looking to build something like this for a while. I built one in about 20 mins. Only had to buy the angle brackets and a few lag screws., cost less than $10 I had every thing in the house..I used old lawn mower wheels and attached them with bolts and lock nuts.I'm building a second one for my caching partner so when they are both painted I'll post a pic. I've also rigged flat staps instead of bungies and they work great. I'm in Nova Scotia, Canada and been caching for 2 yrs,, please visit our local site at Atlanticgeocaching.com
Thanks again for the plans.
4Fitzs - Ed

[kamberliya]

What are the Pros and cons of a inflatable kayak vs a normal kayak? I am new to kayaking and i want to get started, i am not sure about what type of kayak i need. I could imagine that an inflatable kayak may be a little slower than a normal kayak. I live in the bay area near san francisco so i would like to be able to take it out on the bay as well.

[Monkeybrad]

My inflatable kayak experience is limited and I know people who swear by them, but I am not a fan. I prefer the rigidity and sleekness of a traditional yak. Of course, I have lots of room to store them and ways to haul them, if I lived in a apartment by the bay I might have to rethink things. We have an inflatable that we carried for a little while, but it mostly made us wish we had a "real" boat with us.