Wanted: Roof Rack

[yellowcanoe]

Or buy a trailer with fenders. I have a MO Family Four Trailer and have co driven a MO Long Ranger enough times ( a dozen or so) from NJ to TX and LA twice a year to have learned some not so nice things about trailers.

Never ever enter a road unless you are sure you can either turn around or go around the block.. It took me some 90 minutes to turn around my truck and canoe trailer in South Carolina with ditches on both sides of the road at midnight with all the local hounds baying when I went down the wrong street. It was dead end and completely unlit.

You will plot your route to try and avoid left hand turns into gas stations or anywhere your tail could get stuck.. This includes some infamous ditches deliberately placed to funnel rainwater.

You will pick gas stations with pumps parallel to the store.. Perpendicular sometimes means less room to hang a turn without snagging a bollard. Some fast food areas you just have to bypass...

Thou wilt remember you have a trailer. Once I parked in a PA rest area as normal and went to pee. I had parked in the car area with angle parking. Needless to say the trailer was still in the travel lane.

It is truly terrifying to drive in the dark with left hand entering traffic.. Atlanta.. Its bad enough in a car.. add a trailer and you have pucker.

Never let your trailer wag your tow vehicle. Bob Foote and Karen Knight were towing a trailer with a van and hit the edge of the pavement with the trailer .. It pulled them into a total rollover destroying boats and van. Not sure why they drifted off; I wasn't there,

I still have my trailer but it is seldom used anymore as I need not take six boats at one time now.

 

[TrailBlaser]

Can't tow a trailer with the Optima. Also couldn't get it into a lot of the put-ins.

 

[Guest]

One more thing on trailer use. If you tow boats on a trailer absolutely, positively have mud flaps for the towing vehicle’s rear tires.

Or buy a trailer with fenders.

YC, the trailer in question had full sized fenders, it wasn’t spray and such coming off the trailer tires. We racked a canoe with near pristine brightwork on the bottom right crossbar, and when I next saw the canoe (OK, more like 2500 miles later) the front left edge of the forward thwart so was denuded of varnish it looked like it had been chewed on, and the front left edge of the yoke wasn’t far behind.

WTF?

That was a mystery until we put the canoe back on the trailer. The rear wheels of the towing vehicle did not have mud flaps, and the right rear tire was perfectly aligned with the damage to the (upside down and outboard) leading edges of thwart and yoke. Sand, gravel, road salt, squirrel guts; all had been sprayed back by the van’s tires, taking a toll.

That aimed alignment for brightwork damage may have been the perfect storm of positioning, distance and road surfaces travelled, but it also made me think about racking the hull of a composite canoe or decked boat, at least on the lower bars, without having mud flaps on the tow vehicle.

 

[yellowcanoe]

True the back end of ANYTHING without mud flaps is a disaster. Our Forester( no mudflaps) has a solid back window.. Solid with grime. At below zero with 40 mph winds it will stay that way.. Our towing vehicles have always been mudflapped and grime on the canoes not a big deal. As we were towing wood and canvas canoes most were bagged. Yet the opening on the top of the canoe (mounting gunwale down) on the bars is not covered well.. And being ribbed canoes, anyone who has tried to get grit out of the space between rib and plank know that is a tiresome and mostly futile job.
At least in winter climes I think most vehicles do have mud or snow ice and grit flaps.. However our travel trailer does not.. Thankfully there is no window in the back but there is a rear camera... ( good reminder to throw windshield washer fluid in the repair kit with a paper towel). By the time we get to where we are going it will look like it participated in a mud derby.

Its not fun packing the truck today.. We are going to Beckwith country.. That little so and so keeps posting beach pics.