: My best contribution is to show you my trailer and tell you why it is how
: it is and what is wrong with it...

: I needed a trailer which would carry a minimum of eight sea kayaks with a
: maximum height of 2m so it would fit on the car (as opposed to the commercial
: vehicle) deck of a UK-Norway ferry. The lorry deck is twice as expensive...

: The trailer materialised from ebay, at £250 and needed some work. I totally
: replaced the paddle box, did a load of welding on the frame (there were some
: stress points that were inadequately reinforced and failing), and added a
: lighting gantry at the back (so that sea boats overhung less than 1m, which
: is the legal limit in the UK and much of Europe) to replace the original and
: disintegrating lights. The lighting gantry can be removed and the lights
: attached directly to the trailer frame for carrying shorter boats. As it was
: going to be towed for three thousand miles through fairly remote country,
: I added mounts for two spare wheels.

: What did I do wrong ?

: 1) I made a choice to have the lights slightly wider than the trailer body.
: This made the construction slightly easier and seemed like a good idea at
: the time, but it makes the lights very vulnerable to catching on things
: when turning - I split the right hand side plastic tube on a post when
: tight into a passing place on a narrow road in Arctic Norway. Next time,
: I'd make sure no vulnerable plastic bits stuck out wider than the trailer
: body, and that the outside component would be steel !

: 2) The WBP plywood I made the paddle box out of has not proved to be quite
: as weatherproof as I had hoped, and a bit at the front of the trailer is
: now delaminating. It'll still last a good few years without attention,
: though.

: 3) A lot of the boats we use in the winter for white water are too short
: to rest on the bars. We don't often use the trailer for white water trips,
: but do need to carry short boats for club come-and-try-it days, so I'm
: still trying to figure out a way to address this deficiency.

: 4) The boats, particularly on the bottom deck, are poorly protected from
: road chips and salt spray.

: 5) I would have preferred a braked trailer - having it unbraked in Norway
: meant I was nominally limited to 40 mph, although since speed cameras don't
: know technical details this wasn't an issue in practice, and a lot of the
: roads round fjord shores are bendy enough that I couldn't have gone over
: the 50 limit 90% of the time anyway.

: 6) There are welded-on tie down points. These are a pain, and completely
: unnecessary, as straps round the cross bars are more secure anyway. A
: couple of the tie-downs had failed, and I will, in time, take the angle
: grinder to the rest.

: On the plus side - if I don't have the 2m height restriction I can use the
: top layer and get 11 sea boats on, or a big open boat on the top deck, or
: two double sea kayaks, and still get singles on the car roof rack without
: the boats bashing into each other on turns. I've also added removeable
: frames to turn the trailer into a reception tent for our annual charity
: paddle event. I bought the bits to fit a trailer stabiliser, but have
: never actually got round to fitting this, as it has not proved to be
: unstable even when driven quite fast and/or heavily loaded.

: I think the basic design is good - better in many ways than the central
: pillar "christmas tree" designs as the boats are all inside the
: steel
: frame which is going to take any impact before the boats do (since each
: boat is worth more than the trailer...)

: and the final plus point is that the trailer gave me the excuse I needed
: to teach myself welding :-)

: Andy

I like the dual axle, that's one thing I'd add to the ideal trailer.

Bill H.