Kayak Rack

by Dave Jones (NT37-212)

After buying two kayaks over the winter, we needed a way to carry them on Sir Tugley Blue so I designed a simple rack made from readily available 1" stainless steel tubing and fittings (bought from Sailrite Inc. - www.sailrite.com). The tubing was ordered slighlty longer than needed to allow for final cuts to be made during assembly. For now, I am using foam saddles to cradle the kayaks and tie-down straps to hold them in place. I may add Yakima kayak saddles for next year. I store the kayaks bottom up to avoid denting the hulls. Since writing this, I have added Yakima Hully Rollers to the bars.

This photo shows one of the outer corners of the rack which is made from a stanchion base and a 90 deg. elbow jointed by a short stub of tubing. the stanchion bases were located on the raised edges along the sides of the pilot house. One through-bolt was used on each stanchion base and three regular screws. The through-bolt hole was drilled oversized, filled with epoxy and redrilled for the bolt. The regular screws were bedded in 3M 4200.

To strengthen the rack, I decided to add a center support as shown in the photo, made from a tee, a short tube stub, and a stanchion base. It was a good choice as it kept the tubing lengths shorter for shipping and definitely made the rack stiffer.

The kayaks rode out a 50 mph squall successfully recently.

The rack design could easily be used to mount solar panels.