A substantial feat

Last weekend we finally got our kayak hung in the garage. In our previous life it had its own home on a rack in the garden, but here we don't have that kind of space. It's been languishing on the lower patio on the wrong side of the house to ever be used.The plan has always been to hang it from the garage ceiling but it has taken this long to get it done. The kayak is 17 feet long and the garage is 19, so we didn't have much  room for error.The first and biggest hurdle was to find a mechanism that would support the weight and operate easily. We Googled weights and pulley systems and our first attempt was with bits and pieces from Capital Iron and Canadian Tire. Definitely a non-starter. A single pulley seemed to double the weight and a double pulley took up too much of the 23 inches we had available above the garage door runners. Back to Google where Jim came up with a Harken system specifically geared to our problem and even showing a Subaru Outback in the photo!
Unfortunately our roof trusses run the wrong way. Of course. So it took us one whole afternoon to install 2x4's across the trusses.  A second afternoon was spent installing the cross pieces in the right locations. And finally we took another 4 hours to attach the actually pulley system. The construction time was taken up in finding studs, measuring, figuring, drilling, and winding in lag bolts all 9 feet in the air. Installing the system was relatively straightforward until it came to balancing the kayak and the limited length length of the garage and the shortened drop that that allows.

So, it's hanging but it isn't perfect. We can't let the kayak down onto the car, even though it looks like we could in the photo, because the car with the kayak won't clear the garage opening. And because the garage is short the drop rope is short so the kayak only comes down to about shoulder height making for a not-as-easy-as-we-would-like-it operation. In fact it may be quite difficult to get it rehung as someone, Jim, has to hold one end up high while I figure out a way to get the buckle clipped. But at least it has a home and now it may get some water time.