How do I hang a canoe in my garage?

February 1, 2021 3:17 PM

I just bought a 16 foot Old Town canoe and the only convenient place to store it would be hung up in our garage. I searched for ideas and it seems everyone has their own idea about the best way to do this. Are there a couple standard ways to hang a canoe overhead so it's easy to get up and down, but secure while up? I'm as overwhelmed after searching as I was before. I don't want to reinvent the wheel.

I've also seen some kits with pulleys that really appeal to me, it looks like I could hang the boat right over my car and lower it straight onto the roof rack. Are those pulley systems any good?

posted by Tehhund to Home & Garden (10 answers total)

The sailing hardware company Harken makes a family of products called Hoisters - probably the kind of lines/blocks/hooks sets you have seen. They work pretty well.

I worked for several years in a boat yard doing sailing rigging and Harken's stuff is pretty high quality. You can probably get cheaper versions of all of this but these sets are well-thought out and eliminate a lot of the trial and error.
posted by niicholas at 4:01 PM on February 1, 2021 [2 favorites]

Everyone I've known who had a canoe made two big inverted U shapes from 2x4s and nailed them onto their garage joists. Mostly they'd pad them with old carpet and slide the canoe in. If your joists are exposed, that's the simplest way to go.
The idea of lowering the canoe onto the car with pulleys is appealing. I assume that you can screw the pulley hangers into the joists even if they're drywalled over. Canoes aren't that heavy, so anything you do will probably be okay. This is one of the few cases where you can do whatever seems like a good idea and it'll work fine. Just make sure the car will clear the door when the canoe is on top.
posted by AugustusCrunch at 4:03 PM on February 1, 2021 [5 favorites]

Also make sure the garage door can open when the canoe is up.
posted by AugustWest at 5:18 PM on February 1, 2021 [6 favorites]

Agreed with the make sure the door clears. Our garage fails both tests with our Prius C, not exactly a tall car.

My in laws have the pulley system and I find it annoying. It’s not as smooth as it seems and I often fail to get things lifting level and have to fuss with it.

A dear friend has the 2x4 U at the far end of her garage, noses that in, then secures the end closer to the garage door with rope that is tied to a rafter, loops under the boat, through a eye loop in the same rafter, then the free end is wrapped around a cleat on the wall. So you nose the boat in to the far end, loop the rope around the near end, hoist and wrap. It’s slick. If I had room, I’d copy, but my kayak storage is in the way. My canoe is laid across two of those wire shelving units in front of the car. It’s a bit of a pain, but there’s no way to store our canoe that doesn’t require backing the cars out.
posted by advicepig at 5:43 PM on February 1, 2021 [3 favorites]

If it were me, and the canoe fits across the width of the garage, I would screw a couple of ceiling hooks into studs (parallel to the top of the garage door) and hang it on one side by the gunwales. I've used pulleys and they are definitely better from a standpoint of requiring less strength but by the time I've figured out how to release them I could have wrangled it down. We have a 20-lb ladder (which I understand is quite a bit lighter than a canoe) that I have hanging from two hooks and I can get it down by myself without a stepstool. Ideally you'd space the hooks such that you could stick one end of the canoe on and then do the other, so you wouldn't need to bear the whole weight at once and probably wouldn't need a helper. But yes, double check the clearance for your head with it hanging, and that you're not blocking the garage door.
posted by wnissen at 5:50 PM on February 1, 2021 [1 favorite]

my detached garage has rafters upon which i have a canoe resting, secured to joist (?) with bike lock through thwart. it is not my canoe, and is a little high in the water and tippy for my canoeing comfort (belongs to friend whose personal watercraft tend to be a little specialized for my less advanced skill level; i think this one is for use in currents), so i haven't taken it down for use. i assume your garage does not have such rafters or that solution would have suggested itself. by secure to you mean fastening so it is hard to dislodge or for prevention of theft? (we had a big aluminum canoe when i was a kid that we kept outside against a fence; some time after we moved to a new home, where we stored it similarly against a retaining wall, it was stolen).
how about placing hooks/rings in ceiling joists, and hanging wide, flat cargo straps from those in two or three big loops?
posted by 20 year lurk at 5:54 PM on February 1, 2021 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks all. Our joists are drywalled over so it's not as easy as attaching 2x4s to exposed joists. I think I'll give a pulley system a shot and if that doesn't work well I'll revisit these options. Thanks to niicholas for the brand recommendation, one of my concerns about the pulleys was they looked cheap and I didn't know how to find quality ones.

Now to go out and measure - our garage is a little deeper than normal so I think the ceiling can accommodate the garage door and a canoe, but I'd better be sure before I go buying and drilling.
posted by Tehhund at 6:50 PM on February 1, 2021 [1 favorite]

Eye hooks in the ceiling, ratcheted tie straps with hooks to hold the canoe by its bottom.
posted by yclipse at 11:01 AM on February 2, 2021

I hung a Laser hull over my mom's precious 1971 Volvo 1800 using a Harken Hoister for about 15 years and I'm still alive, so I second niicholas.
posted by nicwolff at 2:43 PM on February 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Update: I got lazy and just set the canoe upside down on top of some wooden compost bins a previous owner built outside the garage and covered it with a tarp. So far no problems.
posted by Tehhund at 10:12 AM on May 29, 2021 [1 favorite]