Making an Anchor Trolley

First let me say, what a great project! And one easy enough that anyone who can operate a cordless drill can do.

The kayak anchor Trolley

Here’s a step by step on how I did mine. This is a must have for your fishing kayak so pay close attention and feel free to comment below with questions and thoughts.

Here’s the parts I gathered to complete my trolley system. Ignore the orange carabineer as that’s something for a later project.

Contents:

Pad-Eyes w/ screws and rivets
Stainless Ring about 2” dia
2 Stainless pulleys
Shrink tube
Para Cord
Grippers/Foam sticker

The first step is to determine where to place the pad-eyes on your kayak. Generally you want them as far forward and back on the bow and stern as you can get them. However, this is not exactly correct. What you want to do is place them as far forward and back as possible without allowing the curvature of the kayak to cause the cord to want to flip onto the deck of the kayak instead of running down the side. If your too far forward / back, your cord will want to constantly ride up onto the deck of you kayak or worse, the bottom of the kayak. This is the hardest part of the project so take your time, it’s downhill from here. 

What I did was put some masking tape where I thought I wanted the pad-eyes on the bow and stern. I then stretched a piece of cord from one piece of tape to the other to see how it would react. By doing this, I found I had to move the tape a couple times until I’d found the best place. The tape will also allow you to make marks and line up or level the pad-eyes with the line of your boat.

Once you’ve made the determination of where to place the pad-eyes, mark one hole location by holding the pad-eye in place and either marking the hole with a Sharpie or using a center punch. I chose to use a center punch so my drill wouldn’t wander when I drilled the hole. Once marked, drill the first hole on your mark with the proper size drill depending on if you’re using rivets or screw. I used the screws that came with my pad-eye kit, so my drill size was 1/8”.

Next step is to hold the pad-eye in place and place a screw or rivet in place just to help you line up the next hole placement. DO NOT rivet the pad-eye in place just yet.
Now while you have a rivet or screw holding the pad-eye in place drill your second hole using the pad-eye as a guide to drill the hole.

Next is to remove the pad-eye and squeeze some clear RTV silicone into the new holes. You don’t have to use much here, just some into the hole and leave just a small amount on the outside. Don’t worry if you use too much as you can wipe away the excess with a paper towel for a clean look.

While your pad-eyes should be above water line and some may say you won’t need any silicone, for me it’s a matter of “better safe than sorry”. Not to mention it’s easy to do and silicone is pretty cheap to pick up.

Next, attach your pulleys to your pad-eyes. I chose to use a small piece of paracord for this. I cut a small section of paracord, just long enough to make it possible to do the job. Remember to slip on a section of shrink tube before you connect the two ends of paracord. I chose to overlap the ends of paracord by about 1.5-2 inches and then stitch or sew them together. I have never sewn before but was able to successfully do this and it was surprisingly strong. However you chose to connect the two ends be sure slip the shrink tube over the connection and shrink it into place. Doing this will help avoid the ends from fraying or snagging on anything. Not to mention it really gives it a finished look.

What I did next is totally not necessary but a customization I elected to do. I wrapped my 2” stainless ring with paracord to help reduce the amount of noise it would make while vibrating or hitting the side of the kayak. To do this I cut a piece of paracord and removed the inside strands and wrapped it around the ring until it overlapped. Once it over lapped a couple wraps I cut the ends as short as possible and melted them together with a lighter. Piece of cake!

By the way, this really helped with reducing the amount of noise that ring makes by hitting the side of your kayak. Not to mention it looks really cool when the project is completed. Great mod!

Okay, almost done! Time to run the paracord between the two pulleys. What you want to do is to run the line through one pulley, through your ring, through the other pulley, and back to the ring. Once at this point you’ll want to attach the paracord to the ring in the same way you did the paracord to the pulleys. 

Next, you want to take the last end and pull all the slack out of your paracord and tie it to your ring with the line very taught. Now you’ll want to stretch that cord out by pulling on it. If you’ve ever worked with paracord you’ll know that its very stretchy, so you’ll want to work a lot of that out so your anchor trolley line isn’t sagging into the water when you go to use it the first time. My suggestion is to leave the second end tied to your ring until your very comfortable that the line has completely stretched out  before you permanently attached it.

Some people might disagree with the use of paracord for this application but I will give you my opinion on why I used it. I ask that you remember I am a new kayak fisherman so remember that as you read my thoughts.

I used paracord without any bungee cord because of how elastic paracord is. I personally believe just about any non natural fiber cord stretched over that long of a distance will have more than enough elasticity to keep any damage from happening to your kayak from a sudden pull. Also paracord is pretty cheap, highly strong (550lb), and readily available to me since I already have plenty of it from other projects. 

My suggestion is not to use paracord for this application. My suggestion is simply to use whatever you have that’s available to you or easy to get (provided it’s a non natural fiber cord) and works with your pulleys. I like paracord also because of the colors you can get to customize your kayak just that little bit more.

So get out there and add one of the most valuable mods to your kayak that a fisherman can have!  


**Edit: Please note the pad-eye kits call the included bolts with nylock nuts (screws). Because of the kits referring to the bolts as screws I also did in my instructions. However, I do not recommend using actual self threading screws. Those could pull out too easily and cause damage to your kayak.
Thanks to Soccerdad over at GeorgiaKayakFishing.com's forum for helping me address this. BTW, a great forum to check out!