kayak beach wheels

Posted by Mark Camp on Feb 7, 2006

Link attached. (I hope).

It says they are 10 lbs. Of the two designs shown, the one on the top, with larger tires, looks like the one I have. They are rated at 176 lb.

At 10 lbs, I personally would not use them if I had to carry them + the boat. If you can eliminate the need to do that, they may work for you. The big fat wheels do climb over very uneven surfaces.

For stowing: originally, I would remove the wheels and fold the cart up flat, for stowing on the boat, in the aft compartment. Then I got lazy and just tossed the rig under the for'd deck of the Old Town, with the wheels on. (In this case, it pretty much occupies the for'd seat of my double kayak.)

Prior to buying beach wheels, I had a small folding aluminum kayak cart with the hard plastic wheels, from Old Town (CLC sells these, too!). The nice thing about these is

(a) they fold up very small, and they are very light.

(b) They also allow you to lift the bow onto the back of the car top, then come around to the stern and slide the boat onto the cartop, never lifting more than half the kayak. (I would even leave the wheels on the boat.)

But they didn't work too well for me for two reasons.

(a) The narrow, hard small tires do not work well on the beach (they dig in). Your marsh terrain would cause the same problem.

(b) The design is such that to rig them,you slide them under the stern, then hook them to the kayak cockpit with a single bungee hook. While this is exceptionally quick and easy to rig and unrig, it puts the wheels well aft of the center of mass of the boat. As a result, the effective weight at the bow handle was high, maybe 12 lb or more. It was too much for me, given the long hauls and very heavy kayak.

In Response to: Re: Foam Boat Design by Jesse on Feb 7, 2006

Replies:

• Re: kayak beach wheels by Laszlo on Feb 7, 2006
  • Re: kayak beach wheels by James Eager on Feb 7, 2006
    • Re: kayak beach wheels by kerry on Feb 8, 2006