A home for the Garfish

You might remember in an earlier post, we got a canoe that we christened, The Garfish, that we take out for excursions on nearby Bayou Nezpique.  Although we've taken this sea-worthy vessel out numerous times, lately the poor Garfish has been neglected, sort of in that she doesn't have an official home.  She was laid out in the yard upside down.  This is not good for her and only contributes to a canoe shaped dead spot in the grass once we moved her out of the way to mow the grass.  Well, I had Build a Canoe Cradle on my to do list this weekend.

I had an idea that I wanted to hoist her up to the ceiling in our garage and searched the internet for good ideas on how to do it.  There are a multitude of ideas out there in cyberspace, both good and bad.  One of the ones that I thought was really good was also very expensive as it called for 12 pulleys and 2 double pulleys.  I altered the plan to make it "wallet-friendly" and omitted the pulleys altogether and tried to substitute items I had laying around.  You might call this the Fred Sanford approach.  The only items I had to buy were some poly rope and a couple of tie down cleats.

Pulling the Garfish up to the ceiling gets her out of the way without using a footprint of storage space on the ground that we could otherwise use and also gets her out of the weather and out of the way of the lawn mower and fire ant mounds.  For some reason fire ants had taken a liking to her.

All I did was screw 4 bicycle hooks into the beam supports in the ceiling of the garage.  These would hold the weight of the Garfish.  I then glued some carpet remnants to the top of two 2 X 2's and screwed 4 eye bolts into the ends of the 2 X 2's.  These will serve as the cradle.  I then tied the rope to the eye bolts and ran the rope through the bicycle hooks and mounted the tie down cleats to the wall studs at appropriate locations.  I've taken some pictures as it is easier to see than explain.  Here is a front view of the Garfish in her cradle.  Notice I'm confident enough to be standing underneath her.  With my carpentry skills, this area I'm taking the picture from should probably be deemed a hard-hat area.  You can see the carpeted cradle and can also see where the rope is tied down to the cleat.


The front of the cradle with tie-down

Here is a view from the back where you can see one of the bicycle hooks that support the weight of the canoe.  I'll admit that without pulleys, you have to help it along by pushing up on the cradle while another pulls.  It would be much easier with pulleys, but since this was a private (and not government job) my goal was to make this project meet my < $20 budget constraints.  We got her done!


A view of the backside

Here is a close-up of one of the tie-down cleats:


Holding her steady

And here is the all-encompassing shot, showing the Garfish nicely stored away.  You can also see a sack of sweet potatoes hanging from the garage door support while they cure.  I have another sack hanging outside from a tree and two five gallon buckets full of sweet potatoes that I will start curing tomorrow. 


Just hanging out

So this quick project was successful on a number of fronts.  It passed the budget test and met with approval from Tricia for being somewhat aesthetically pleasing as well as functional.  Mission Accomplished!