Trailblazer, that is wonderful. $100 a year and pastries is a bargain, and the stuff of which memories are made.
An unused or unfilled private barn or garage or marina storage would be ideal, especially if near/en route to paddling destinations. Even lacking fortune-of-fate waitress recommendations, or asking at a waterside marina, a “Want to rent barn or outbuilding space to store a canoe” ad in a local paper might produce the desired results.
Seriously, just here at home, within sight, one ancient lady neighbor has an empty block-wall storage building, probably 15’ x 20’. My other neighbor topside of the hill raised beef cattle. He hasn’t had cows in a few years, and probably won’t again, but he has unused barns and sheds aplenty.
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I don't see why the storage facility would mind, as long as the rack(s) were free standing, but I would have to ask. Your point about subletters is a good one, I'd have to think that through. Also presenting the canoe storage idea to storage facilities is interesting, I might try that, thanks!”
Maybe helpful along that line of thinking. The rental storage units I’ve used in the long-ago past were locked with a lessee’s padlock.
I have a lot of pad locks, all on the same key, a trick I learned from a wise friend. He had numerous outbuildings, in several States, all locked up with the same padlock key. He ordered them a dozen at a time, all keyed alike, from Master Lock. I got tired of having multiple “
Not this one. . . .nope, not this one either. . . .” pad locks and keys, bought two at a time, and followed his example, eventually buying 24 of them, provided with 2X that identical keys.
Many of my paddling friends use that same padlock, or at least have the key, and that help-a-brother-out came in handy a time or two.
A storage unit of some kind, and a cherry-picked and trusted circle of friends storing their boat(s), each locked to a rack, each with the same lock/key chastity-belt padlocked entry door benefits, might work better than allowing someone else to control access.
heck, on a down-river trip with friends only one shuttle driver would need to visit the storage locker and load two boats.
“I’ll meet you at the take out to drop off your car. Bring donuts”
A storage locker, a freestanding canoe rack or two, a dozen keyed-alike padlocks and the right circle of access sharers might be just the urban dweller solution. Maybe some version of these, possibly with three sets of triple towered crossbars to take advantage of ceiling height, made wide enough for a three-by-three 9-canoe storage.
8’ foot tall sawhorse legs and crossbars would accommodate a three high by three wide stack. That’s a lotta boat storage rental cost to split.
PB211373 by
Mike McCrea, on Flickr
I used this storage facility (not quite the same back then) 30 years ago to Tetris-pack furniture and home goods between houses; all units were ground level and drive up easy access.
https://www.selfstorageone.com/timonium-md
dang, that place got a lot more
Free coffee, free workroom, free fax and Wi-Fi enabled massage chair with surprise ending, 24-hour guarded and security gated frou-frou in the last 30 years.
Much more expensive now too, like buying a gussied up $50,000 Ford pickup; I guess it is what the upscale market will bear.
Ground-level drive up access would matter for canoe storage ease on and off roof racking. And the depth of storage unit would matter for canoes. I think I rented the second smallest unit, 5’ wide x 10’ deep, with a very tall ceiling, hence the towering Tetris-packing that required a step ladder; everything was getting stuffed into every available inch of space once, and coming out once. The U-haul was packed in the same Tetris-style.
For shared multi-canoe storage something at least 16’ or 18’ deep would be beneficial. With the right urban paddler cohort I can see a communal storage locker having value. But probably not at 5K a year rent, even if that was 4K US.