Northwest Fishing Reports

I have a raft, had some really great time on it. But, it comes time to retire it and upgrade to a pontoon boat. But the problem is I don't have a truck, just a station wagon. The only way to carry a pontoon boat is disassemble it and then assemble it back on site. I've never seen people do that, they always use a truck and the boat is pre-assembled. So my question is: is it hard to assemble a light and on-the-smalle-side pontoon boat? Like 8 ft, 50lb one. Well, I should ask the question this way: How long does it take for you to assemble and inflate your pontoon boat? More importantly, can you do it all by yourself?

Thank you in advance.

Some people carry them on top of their cars.

Amx wrote:Some people carry them on top of their cars.

That's true, but I forgot to mention: I don't have a place to keep an assembled pontoon boat at home. :-(

The costco one I had once took about 30 minutes to assemble right out of the box. Depending on what you get, there most likely will be different stages of dissassembly. Might be able to just take the pontoons off and keep the frame in one piece, or you may need to break the frame down also and even that can be done in different ways.

With a station wagon, depending on the width of the wagon and how much other stuff you have, you may even be able to keep the whole thing assembled and just deflate the pontoons to get it in and out of the car. Then your only real breakdown and build is done for storage and not for transport. And like AMX said, if you have any kind of a rack you can just assemble it at home and strap it to the top.

For storage though, I suggest you not completly deflate the toons, leave a little bit of air in there to try and avoid creasing - creasing leads to cracking.

As Gringo mentioned, put the toon together at home and transport it in your vehicle, deflated. I can transport mine in my PT Cruiser. Bring a tarp for the ride home to help keep the inside of your car dry. After you put it together and take it a part a few times, you can get it into the 10 - 15 minute range, depending on the number of extra goodies you have on it.

G-Man wrote:As Gringo mentioned, put the toon together at home and transport it in your vehicle, deflated. I can transport mine in my PT Cruiser. Bring a tarp for the ride home to help keep the inside of your car dry. After you put it together and take it a part a few times, you can get it into the 10 - 15 minute range, depending on the number of extra goodies you have on it.

Huh! That sounds like a viable idea, all I need to do is do some measuring and find one that fits in the trunk. Thanks a lot! (Station wagons look lame for males, but comparing to sedans, they are more practical. This mans feel better driving around in a wagon.) Thank you all!

Not sure if this helps, but this is what I bought:
http://www.cabelas.com/product/Bargain- ... t105765480" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It may be on the cheap side when it comes to pontoons, but it holds 375 pounds and had great reviews so I gave it a try. I've had mine out half a dozen times since getting it a month ago. I pack it down into 6 pieces usually not including oars. It would fit in the trunk of my little two door car. With having a station wagon you just might be able to fit it in there deflated like previously suggested but it's not hard to clip everything together. It usually does take 15 minutes to put it all together then another few minutes to get suited up in waders and fins and such but boy is it a blast. When you to go pack it down to put back in your vehicle, that time is more then cut in half. I picked up a cheap dual action pump at walmart for 10 bucks and it does the job great, I've also seen car adapter pumps around 20 bucks that could be real handy as well. Let me know if I can be of any help!

mwdehaan wrote:Not sure if this helps, but this is what I bought:
http://www.cabelas.com/product/Bargain- ... t105765480" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It may be on the cheap side when it comes to pontoons, but it holds 375 pounds and had great reviews so I gave it a try. I've had mine out half a dozen times since getting it a month ago. I pack it down into 6 pieces usually not including oars. It would fit in the trunk of my little two door car. With having a station wagon you just might be able to fit it in there deflated like previously suggested but it's not hard to clip everything together. It usually does take 15 minutes to put it all together then another few minutes to get suited up in waders and fins and such but boy is it a blast. When you to go pack it down to put back in your vehicle, that time is more then cut in half. I picked up a cheap dual action pump at walmart for 10 bucks and it does the job great, I've also seen car adapter pumps around 20 bucks that could be real handy as well. Let me know if I can be of any help!

Thanks a lot! Yes, that's exactly same pontoon that I'm looking at. It got great reviews and now with a review from a "real person", I think I'm gonna get it. Please check your PM, I'll send you one later for more info. Thanks a million!

No problem, I get email alerts so I'll get back to you promptly