Portable Raft

My friend and I like to take a canoe out on a shallow stream south of town. The downside is that the only place to launch from is underneath bridges, which means hauling a canoe and everything we bring with down a precarious mound of rocks, trying not to scratch up the canoe or break our legs in the process. Also, we only have one truck, which means that we have to do a ridiculous car shuffling when we land, with two people hauling the canoe back up under a bridge while the other two take a car to go pick up the truck at the launch site, then come back to pick the canoe up. Also, it's an extremely shallow stream, which means that the canoe sometimes bottoms out on sandbars, and we have to get out and push or drag it.
Our solution is to build a raft, injected with foam, with hinges in the middle so that it can be folded into a car trunk and carried down the rock slope easier. I was wondering if anything similar had been tried before. There would be metal eye pieces that we would put a pin through to lock it, so it doesn't bend once its in the water. But I'm fairly new to boat-building, so I was wondering about things like whether foam insulation reacts badly to being in water, how to weather-proof and water-proof the raft, and what a sensible size would be. Any ideas?

 

Greetings, grayjk.

That must be the only creek within 100 miles, or the fishing must be spectacular! Where in the US are you?

 

Neither. It's just a good, calm river, and there's a few spots along it we camp. Indianola Iowa btw.

 

Can you put a line on it and haul it up onto the bridge? Another thought is to make a raft out of plastic tubing (4 to 8" dia) but you'd need to tie them all together. One could make clamps but it may be tough enough to just drag it around.

 

Inflatable raft with a plywood floor, maybe? Easy to move, you just need to spend some time pumping it up at the waters edge.

 

See comments above. There are foam and pvc versions of pontoons and float tubes which I don't like as much. Hobie makes a pvc version pontoon :

http://www.tufox.com/hobie/index.html

Here's a cheaper foam version:

http://floatpros.com/floatpro.php

Hope this helps.

Porta

 

I am thinking that this would be a perfect place to use a folbot. Everything stays in the bag until you get down to the river bank.

http://www.folbot.com/?gclid=CNSWgaSv7KcCFQbc4AodLX6YaQ

 

I forgot to mention that the boats' pontoons fold INWARD while inflated, so that one can fit INSIDE the back of my PRIUS while completely inflated. Another can be strapped to the top of car in the inflated form. I keep the pontoons packed and inflated between trips and stored in my garage, so they are ready to go instantly. They bounce off rocks and slide across and between, obstructions with the slick PVC dressing; without a passenger's weight there is not any damage. The only time I deflate is when packing in to remote trips or for transport as standard airline luggage....

P.