Mark & Emily's new Kayak Trailer!

I have been dreaming about having a kayak trailer for my bike for about 7 years -- at least since the day in the late 90s when i saw a Farington Chariot at a kayak shop in Sitka Alaska. I waffled for a while, but when i decided to buy the Chariot a few years ago, the company was gone. (Val at Bikesmith suspects that they lost the company in an insurance lawsuit because the web domain at one time directed to an insurance company.)

Then for quite some time i tried to build one, or to get someone to build one for me, with no luck. I spent a lot of time researching and planning it. The idea i have in my head is for two 20" or 16" bicycle wheels which are connected with a structure and some way of cradling the kayak, either a fabric hammock or a couple of lateral (running front to back) foam bars. The boat would sit with it's center of gravity on the axle between the wheels. Then it could be pushed or pulled like a cart, or attached to a bicycle. My friend David has talked of building a trailer with a very high axle so that one kayak or canoe can be put on top and the other suspended with straps below the axle.

The big challenge is a connection to the bicycle. I imagine the options to be:
* axle hitch like the BOB uses - i like this but it may not be stable enough.
* chain stay connector - may need an additional front wheel
* something that connects to a rear rack
* seat tube clamp on a rising tongue.

The long tongue connecting the trailer is of course a big issue -- if you have a tongue, it has to run 8 to 10 feet under the boat to the bike and then, i assume turning up to the seat post. The tongue is the key that makes the trailer expensive and awkward. However, i have a 'Sea-Kayaker' magazine which shows directions for an easy to make hitch which attaches to the nose of a kayak, eliminating the need for the long tongue.

But this has all been solved because recently my great car-free friends Emily & Chris got interested and decided to go halfsies with me on pre-made trailer. I was absolutely thrilled to get moving on this!

We very seriously considered this trailer at Bikes At Work, and Jim was very helpful.

After a long discussion we settled on a neat trailer from a great guy named Tony Hoar in Victoria BC. Tony is a brilliant engineer who builds bikes and trailers in his one person shop, Tony's Trailers. He is also a racer who finished LAST in the Tour de France FIFTY years ago (and still races!). I thoroughly enjoyed meeting him and working with him.



So, with great excitement today we assembled and test rode our new kayak trailer!! Although late January, it was a summer-like day in the upper 60s. I quite regretted not wearing shorts.

Assembling it out of the box.

Emily has photos posted too!

Tony's innovative connector

It's very long

Comparing the length with my BOB trailer

One cool thing about this trailer is that Tony made it so that it also converts to a grocery getter model.  You just use the quick release to take a section out of the tongue and drop a Rubbermaid(tm) container on the back.  You can ride it to the grocery store, disconnect it and use it for a shopping cart!

Learning the feel of the trailer on my first test ride.

It has a surprisingly tight Turning Circle

Emily rides by with the trailer on her folder

Already advertising for Tony!

This thing gets noticed! People comment on the trailer. They stop and ask questions about it. We handed out several of Tony's business cards today just while testing it! I'm going to carry a stack of them with me whenever i take the trailer out.

Emily's boat on board, i'm ready to Go on the...

First Ride!!!

We were both a bit worried about how this very long load would navigate on city streets, especially around Seattle's neighborhood traffic circles. But the trailer tracks very nicely behind the bicycle and could get around obstacles pretty easily.

Cruising easily around a neighborhood traffic circle

This is FUN!

One really nice thing about this trailer is that the kayak sits over the axle, which carries almost all of the weight. When loaded correctly the tongue weight is almost nothing, so your seat post, the flexible tongue and the hitch don't carry any weight.

There is a large compression strap which hooks over the axle and holds the boat tightly on the foam pad across the axle. Then another compression strap goes around the nose of the boat to hold it in the Y shaped yoke. A third strap goes around the body of the boat and the tongue. This supports the flexible tongue, keeps it from bouncing (mostly) and transfers the structure to the boat. The kayak itself becomes the structural beam of the trailer!

After getting used to riding with one boat on the trailer, we started thinking about stacking the second boat. I was a little nervous about the weight involved. Emily's neighbor Stella was watching this whole process and so Emily figured she could help.

Stella paddles up Ashworth Ave!

Somewhat reassured, we put my boat on top!

Two Kayaks.

We used an old car rack set up i bought years ago. The two foam car-top frames went between the boats and a bunch of compression straps held the two boats together very well. We put a lot of straps on them, i think we can leave a couple off. We probably only need two, front and back to hold the boats together.

Going up hill wasn't really difficult with one boat, but with two boats it was a bit harder. Otherwise the stacked trailer worked great!

fully loaded

And then i headed off to ride 9 miles on the trail by Lake Union, getting quite a few stares! It was getting dark soon so i didn't get to paddle today, but i rode up to the University and out to Ballard (where i bumped into an old friend, Liz!). 

Off to the lake

I was just getting the feel for the trailer. It rode very nicely... I could tell i had a big trailer, but it wasn't unwieldy at all.


The kayak gear, flotation vests, spray skirts, paddles, dry bags, food, clothing etc get stuffed in the cockpit. I figured i would put a spray skirt over the cockpit when it was on the trailer to enclose the gear, especially if it was raining.

You'd think that with two kayaks and all the gear that the weight (about 200 lbs) and the length (about 24 feet from front wheel to the back of the kayak) would be the biggest challenges, but they were really not that noticeable.

What did require my attention was the width and the bounce. At almost 3 feet between wheels it was sometimes hard to thread through Seattle's very narrow bicycle trails, i almost hit a wheel on a wall, a tree, and a couple of bollards. It would be nice if it had a bar in front of the wheel to deflect such an impact.

And while the weight of the load wasn't a problem at all on the flats (it did make hills really big!) the heft of the thing combined with the long tongue could get a good bounce going if i didn't have a smooth pedal stroke.  On my few attempts to go up a small hill it was the bounce that stopped me before the weight became unmanageable.  I was very glad i had clipless pedals and a full pedal stroke.


And on a personal note, I noticed a very strange phenomenon, a contradiction which probably says more about my personality than it does about this wonderful new trailer.

What i noticed was my reaction to bystanders' reactions. When i rode through a middle class family neighborhood like Ballard people were amazed. They would point and shout 'oh my god he's towing kayaks!'.

My reaction (usually kept to myself) was always: 'What's the big deal? Bikes can do anything. Move along, nothing unusual here.'.

But when i went through a more jaded, younger, hipper neighborhood like Fremont and i found that no one looked up, no one noticed, no one said anything, my reaction (usually kept to myself) was: 'WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU!!! CAN'T YOU SEE I'M TOWING A PAIR OF KAYAKS!?!?! PAY ATTENTION!.