On 5/25/05, Marilyn Kircus <mkircus_at_academicplanet.com> wrote: > But you definitely need to define your uses of the vehicle and fit it to your height and strength. Another solution is to go with a trailer for the kayak. This way you can use any vehicle and not have to worry about lifting over your head. > > Your chances of getting hurt are probably greatest when you are loading your kayak on top of you vehicle you you need to be sure you can do it without being at the limits of your reach and strength. Another perfect reason for those of us light weight weenies who cough up the money for the lighter boats. I have no problems loading my 32 pound, 21'6" boat, all by myself without any concerns for injury. I do miss my 24 pound boat the preceded this one. Alas that weight resulted in durability issues. The 32 pounder feels overbuilt, not quite in the Doug Lloyd sense though ;-) As for specific cars. My vw passat wagon is a pretty good kayak car. It's easy to load, and holds a good amount of gear. But I'm not sold on it's reliability - mileage is usually 27 miles per gallon with boats on the roof. I loved my saab 9-5 as a gear hauler, it held a massive amount of stuff and I think my thule roof rack would have failed before the car's roof flexed.. But it wasn't an inexpensive car, I did like that the owners manual recommended using 86 octane gas ;-) My current favorite is probably the CRV, but I don't know that I could get the CRV, with boats on the roof into the parking garage at work for those afterwork paddles. I can fit the passat with boats on it into the parking garage. Kirk *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Thu May 26 2005 - 17:22:30 PDT
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