May 9, 2012

An old swing set, wood from the scrap pile and voila - kayak rack

WATKINS GLEN, New York, USA - Adm. Fox and I have had our small kayaks here at the N. Glen Avenue house since last spring but never actually got them out of the storage shed and onto the water all last season.

It just seemed, well, like too much work to haul them out of the shed, load them onto the roof of the Lexus and head to a launch ramp.

This afternoon, our neighbor Billy and took most of the 'too-much-work' complaint right out of it.
The base unit

A friend (who also has kayaks) found an old wooden swing set that looked like it would make a good base for some kayak racks. Then Billy and I rummaged through my old deck boards and came up with the balance of the lumber.

The result? A kayak rack right at the launch ramp in Watkins maybe 50 feet from the water. And it is capable of holding at least eight and maybe 10 kayaks.  It took the two of us about an hour or so of banging the nails in to put it together. We tried to use some screws but the wood is harder than the shale rock around here to drill through...

Both of our kayaks will be set up at the rack and ready to go tomorrow. In fact, if the weather cooperates, perhaps tomorrow will be our first day on the lake for the 2012 season.

Of course the other change this year is that I have my little red Nissan truck ready for hauling, which makes getting kayaks down to the newly constructed racks much easier than fooling with the Lexus' roof racks.

Now if I can just remember where the @^#&#@#$^&#*(* I put the kayak paddles and life jackets.

Ah, I can look manana...
Neighbor Billy swinging the hammer

Almost finished product with Captain's kayak in place

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