Jack_Martin_at_jtif.webfld.navy.mil wrote: > Primex makes a beautiful cart, but $100+ seems kind of excessive. > > Options? Sea stories? Jack, if you are interested in a "home brew" approach, the following midwheel arrangement cost me about $60 US, I think. If you used cheaper wheels, it might go as low as $30 - $40 US. Midwheels are the way to go if you have to haul the yak (with gear) any distance. A buddy of mine and I welded a couple of 3/8" x 4" bolts into the ends of a 30" piece of 1" iron water pipe (ground-off heads inside the pipe -- threaded ends to the outside) and slid a couple of 26" bicycle wheels onto the bare bolts (these had el cheapo sleeve bearings and were spoked up to some cheap steel rims by a local bike shop for about $40 - $50, I believe). With some self-locking nuts and a couple washers, one on either side of each wheel, we had a bombproof support for a standard old Yakima cradle (borrowed it off my yak rack). Strapped the yak in and off we went. We used this arrangement to haul gear a half-mile down a really rough, rutted, 4WD track to a put-in on Willapa Bay (WA -- in SW corner of Washington State). And, my SO and I used it to ro-ro most of our kit (in a large single) during a two-week excursion to the Charlottes (BC) two years ago. We had a stern wheel setup (8 inch hard rubber wheels) on a smaller single yak, and hated it so much we moved almost all our gear to the midwheels setup. The value of 26" bicycle wheels is they go over the most incredible obstructions, and they put the yak at a convenient height for hand-towing. We put our complete kit for overnight camping in the yak, so I know the cart/rack is strong. Main design flaw probably is that the entire yak and its load are supported by ONE Yakima cradle -- only about a 4 inch width. Another flaw is that the wheels are too large to stuff into a hatch. I suspect those 12-15 inch composite ("plastic") wheels on smallish kid's bikes might fit, and they would be a lot cheaper than the 26 inch steel rimmed ones I had spoked up. -- Dave Kruger Astoria, OR *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************Received on Sun May 17 1998 - 05:57:46 PDT
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