The Family Recreation Fund was tapped this week to purchase a trailer rig for the canoe. We bought it from Wike and it seems good for the money. The wheels are cheap-ish plastic, but what the heck. The load on them is not that heavy and they will not get used more than a couple dozen times per year.The canoe itself is the frame and a hitch and tongue assembly is strapped to the front of the boat. Likewise the wheel assembly is simply strapped on and the cushioned aluminium frame seems well thought out and easy to repair. Wheel assemblies are nylon and held together with cotter pins for easy and fast disassembly. The nylon bits are my main durability concern but time will tell.
We boogied at a respectable pace from our house in Victory Neighborhood to Cedar lake with boat (and paddles, PFD's, cooler, etc. inside) and my son and I on the bike. DeAnn followed on her road bike, completely and utterly unladen, to watch for pieces coming off or stuff falling out. Nothing untoward happened.
It takes a long time to turn this beast. Our canoe is a monster at 20' long. I figure the total length of the entire package is about 29'. Downhills are stable and nice, uphills are work but doable. I managed about 10mph average from our house to Cedar Lake, which is about 7 miles one way. Not bad.
I figure since this canoe is about as long as any out there, we will hold the total rig length record for any Minneapolis-based bike trailer combo for some time. Anyone have photo proof of something longer?
2 comments:
Lanny...That's an awesome picture!!
Just ordered a Wike for exactly the same canoe. It will be at my friend's house in MN on Tuesday, but I won't see it till this summer when we can come up to our place. Thanks for the post; it helped me decide to go with this rig. Can hardly wait!
Ed Thomas
Post a Comment