Kayak Hoist

This is a basic kayak hoist to increase the effective amount of storage space in your shed or garage, if your ceiling is high enough. (It can be used for a bike too.) Easy to understand, easy to install, easy to use, and you can install it regardless of which direction your ceiling studs run. It was very inexpensive, especially when on sale at Menards. I felt their recommendation of how far apart to install the two pulleys based on the kayak length would have been a little farther apart than I would do. So I installed my pulleys a little closer than they said, and afterward, I see I could have installed them a little closer yet.

One potential improvement: this thing hangs your boat down lower than I expected (about 34” from ceiling to the bottom of the hanging kayak). So with my 9.5-foot garage ceiling and my 6'3" height, there are only a few inches of clearance over my head. The main reason is that their straps that go around each end of the boat are so long they could go around something humongous. So for a sleek Pamlico 145T tandem kayak, I could tighten up the straps as far as they go, and there was still noticeably more strap length than I needed. This allows it to hang down about 6-8" further than if I could tight the straps more. They could also likely cut out a couple more inches of length in their hook system.

I may add a hook into the ceiling at each end of the boat, come up w/ some kind of a chain or rope, and once I have it hoisted into place to be stored, I would run those "safety ropes" at each end around the ceiling hook and through the kayak handle. That way if anything on the pulley system ever gives out, the kayak should still be caught by those additional hooks/ropes.