Another Project Completed - Canoe Trailer

Nice job!

We have four of the compact versions that we pull behind our golf carts. (work)

It looks very nice and should last you a long time.

Smart move with the light mounting as those lights are not waterproof.

I'd buy the spare tire mounting kit, it bolts onto the tongue and a spare tire also.

Happy boating!

I'll just buy the spare tire and make a mount. I don't plan on going to very far from home.

It's always satisfying to be able to take a bunch of odds and ends and come up with something functional and fun in the end.

I'm still looking for a Canoe though. It's one thing I have yet to acquire. A number of years ago I called a guy who had one listed in the paper.Said it was in great shape and only needed two parts redone to make it like new.

They guy wanted $200 for it. He said only two things needed to be replaced to make it like new. I said I do aluminum work so that should not be to hard for me to fix or fabricate so I asked what they were. Turns out they were' "Just the body and inner frame".

I told him, "WTF? That's the whole friggin canoe.". He hung up on me.

Was that like that car I was told about, all it needed was a radiator cap and everything below and behind it? -- JHF

Must have been a Cavalier.

Are you the type who might venture making something like a cedar strip canoe?

When I was 20 years younger I did think about one of those Cedar strip canoe builds. Didn't have the time then...don't have the ambition now!

Very resourceful. With that longer hitch, have to remember that when you pull up for gas.

Now this is truly Yankee ingenuity ... you're from Maine, right? Good job!

Look how job (adding the trolling motor) led to another, and another ... like so much else worthwhile in life, nothing's simple.

In my wife's eyes I always "over engineer" everything!

Really pretty, well done.

Just as well you are not in europe though as the lights appear to be (optically anyway), more than 1 meter forward of the rear end of the canoe, to be fully legal.

I don't know your local code or what it allows, but anything that helps to possibly stop a following car "sooner", I feel is worth having.....but maybe I am over safety conscious!!

A "mashed" canoe rear end would be heartbreaking, especially after such clever and good looking work....

It just struck me (pun intended!), that if you made the lights to be "aft" of the canoe, with a really classy, well built connection to the canoe. Plus use some sort of rubber or breakaway system between canoe to the trailer, that is the canoe got "pushed" from behind, it could move forward and upward (to avoid the pulling vehicle), that might reduce the damage to the canoe from a bad driver following too close!

Just a crazy thought! Please ignore!!

"A "mashed" canoe rear end would be heartbreaking, especially after such clever and good looking work...."

Agreed, but at least it provides additional rear crumple zone!

Adding flapping red flag(s) at the tip end of the canoe will make it more visible to whoever is following and safer for you, and the boat as well! A flasher may also do...

Good luck!

You brought up a good point of the load extended beyond the trailer. the requirement varies state to state but its something that the OP should be aware of.

I do plan to have a "flag" on the end of the canoe when towing it.

I can't wait to see the look on the Maine State Trooper's face when he or she sees that set of lights lying on the ground!

I think you did/are doing a splendid job of engineering on this. I would rather have a John boat, with outrigger tube floats for stability. My brother-in-law welder had one of these when he was alive (God rest him well), and neither of us could tip the thing over, once in the water. He also made a jet pump in the shop out of junk and spare parts, and coupled it to a Briggs and Stratton 6 HP motor. We were able to cruise up and down the Rio Grande River south of Van Horn, TX with it just fine.

A normal boat would have snagged on the salt cedars, or would have been aground in the shallows of the river. This thing would just about run on wet grass!

Or, something in a REAL deterrent:

Great job!! One thing I would recommend is to use Green Slime in your tires. A nail in one of your tires can do a lot of damage before being discovered. GS will seal punctures before you know there was a problem and it's a permanent fix too.

I may be the first to have bought a boat so he could make a trailer! I have long ago admitted to an affliction. I had an old trailer similar to the one you based yours on that has beed rusting at the back of our lake house. I bought it used from a friend in 1989, and have used it for a variety of things, and thought it was time to give it a new life. I saw a similar project to this one on the the internet. I have my own "navy" of boats and project craft, but have had my eye on getting a small two man plastic boat for years. I found one cheaply in the local Thrifty Nickel, for a couple hundred, as well as an unused 2 hp motor, so I drew up plans for the conversion. I got the parts powder coated (John Deere green and yellow), bolted them together, and took it to the lake. But now I have to take both grandsons out, so I need to use my bigger 1949 Lonestar rowboat more often, but I'm still proud of the project. Next step is to make an extension for the tongue so I can portage my 15 foot Grumman canoe on the trailer!

As you can see, I used the two spare tires as part of the bow stop. The boat is light enough to load without a winch (I prefer a wench) and if you study the tongue details, I included a pivot point to anchor the tongue to the trailer bed, and that allows me to pull one pin and tilt the trailer to facilitate loading and unloading.

I had the tongue made unecessarily heavy however, so it is a little tongue heavy to move around, but it pulls smoothly. I took the pictures prior to installing the lights, which are mounted at the outside top of the side rail frames.

Really neat, well done.