When I arrived in Victoria, I kept the Thule Tornado roof box on my car. When I moved into my house I took it off the car and secured it by a steel cable to the back fence. When my possesions arrived, I secured my kayak the same way.
Last weekend I went to lumber yard, bought two 8 foot 4×4 posts, and to an equipment rental store where I rented a manual auger. I drilled a couple of post holes in the sandy soil, and used some 2×4’s left in the house by past tenants to built a rack to hold the roof box and the kayak:
That took a chunk of last Saturday. It needs some more work to cradle the kayak – some plywood to the cross pieces, cut in a curve, and some foam noodle should do it. It needs something to secure a tarp to keep the sun and UV off the boat, but that should be easy.
I went shopping for some books on kayaking on salt (tidal!) water and found the Easykayaker books to be useful. On Sunday afternoon, on a slack low tide, I paddled the Gorge from the Kinsmen Park to the Selkirk trestle and then back up the Gorge to the bridge at Admiral’s Road, and back to the park. No pictures – it was enough to get organized and back on the water, without worrying about the camera. I have only been on the water once since 2002. I have missed it, and I am in good place to make up for the lost time.
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