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I’m about to pick up a new camper and will have a regular need to load a 17′ kayak on the roof, often by myself and sometimes in wind. I’ll have a set of round bars spaced 40″ a bit forward on the camper to more or less center the boat over the truck.
Right now, my gut reaction is to use a rope to raise the stern, use a ladder to walk the bow up the side, and heft it on top once the bow clears the roof.
However, I don’t know what I’m doing so any advice to keep me from trying a million dumb ways before figuring out the best way would be appreciated. Thanks
Having a lot of experience raising stoopid amounts of weight it is hard to offer advice without a better picture of the situation. Being a sailor and ex-kayaker davits spring to mind but they might have their shortcomings.?
Also being a strong believer in the KISS methodology I like the idea of a pulley on the rear to get that as high as possible. Then you can use another pulley at the bow. The downside to this is the boat would scrape the side of the camper unless you had a shipping blanket hanging down from the rack. You would also need attachment points for those pullies.
Another half-baked idea is one pulley suspended from the two racks right at the edge of the roof. This would need a ladder of just the right length to act as a ramp of sorts to avoid scraping the side of the camper. You would hoist it right up to the edge, lock it off with a yachting or climbing cam lock, climb up the ladder to push it over the edge onto the rack and secure it.
If it was me I would have those racks much further apart otherwise I would worry greatly if the bow wasn’t tied off and that would entail more fussing.
It’s good to be a n00b - so I can aspire to be just stoopid.
Monrovia, CA
Kyle,
This is off the wall, but we are also trying to figure out how to carry a kayak with us and have seen arrangements like this on a number of motorhomes and have been trying to figure out if there is a way to fab one that would connect to the hitch on our truck and the camper roof. http://www.irv2.com/forums/f65/yak-rack-234810.html
Probably totally impractical, but from talking to folks using them they seem to work well and there were no complaints. We really don’t want to deal with hauling something up and down the roof. Our local welding shop is great and will fab anything I cam draw.
Steve and Andra
2012 F350 6.2 gasser SRW LB
Fab Fours front and rear in case we run into a rhino
2019 Northstar Laredo SCAnother half-baked idea is one pulley suspended from the two racks right at the edge of the roof. This would need a ladder of just the right length to act as a ramp of sorts to avoid scraping the side of the camper. You would hoist it right up to the edge, lock it off with a yachting or climbing cam lock, climb up the ladder to push it over the edge onto the rack and secure it.
If it was me I would have those racks much further apart otherwise I would worry greatly if the bow wasn’t tied off and that would entail more fussing.This gives me a potentially easy low tech idea — just tie a rope to the bow that goes through the front rack and use that to pull/steady the boat as I walk it up a ladder on the back of the camper.
Tying the ends of the boat will be no problem — no way I’d want to transport anything this long any other way. I currently just clip carabiners on small pull lines off the bow and the stern and they’re held nice and firm with a lines with ratchets.
The only issue with this is it requires a lot of ladder moving — up the side to run the rope, up the back to move the boat, and two more positions along the side to secure the boat and secure the tie down line off the bow.
Kyle,
This is off the wall, but we are also trying to figure out how to carry a kayak with us and have seen arrangements like this on a number of motorhomes and have been trying to figure out if there is a way to fab one that would connect to the hitch on our truck and the camper roof.I’ve seen this used successfully on RVs. Not an option for me since my boat is 17′ long.
The one concern I’d have about putting one on a relatively short TC is that if you have much boat sticking out, the aerodynamic forces could be massive. Also, this setup would be heavy if weight is a concern.
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