Tired of trying to find ways to stow all those wing riggers on your trailer now that they are all the rage? Here is a hack that "thinks outside the trailer bed" as it were, and tucks bulky wings up inside the shell. It was sent to us from beyond the Cascades, so we are going to call it the Seattle Wing Sling.

The Wing Sling is genius really: keep the riggers in the boat, all snugged up to a set of foam blocks that attach to the gunwale with a carriage bolt and suspend each wing in the otherwise wasted space up inside the boat--and enjoy the loads of now-rigger-free space in your trailer.

This hack suggestion just came in last week and, while even the best hacks that our readers send in usually go on the end of our long list of great ideas, we wanted to get this one out there before the fall travel season ended--and not so that you could use it on your next trip, but so that you'd have all winter to hack up a set of your own before springtime.

The motivation behind this one was the old mother of them all: pure necessity. At a program that suddenly found their boats of choice sprouting wings, and with no trailer room for bulky wing rigger bags, the next best spot was up in the boat. We are going to guess that this Sling contraption has all sorts of other side benefits, too: no more lost shoes and no forgetting to bungee the seats when the riggers are being so carefully attached inside the boat.

We went right to our source, Ed Maxwell at Green Lake, with some questions and--after quickly crediting Jason Coffman at Mt Baker for the original idea--he spilled his hacker secrets:

"The blocks attach using the rigger bolt holes. I use a single carriage bolt, but you can make them more secure.  

"No wrapping of the rigger is necessary.  You just slot the 'boat' end of the rigger into the stern end of one block, then bungee the oarlock end into the bow side of the other.  We will also bungee the backstay to keep it from rolling around.

"[We] never had the rigger bags.  Before we switched to wing rigger boats, our trailer was full of stuff.  The wings take up a huge amount of room that we didn't have.  We needed to find something else.  We started with carbon riggers which are incredibly fragile.  This keeps them safe up in the boat.

So there you have it: some pretty sweet Seattle problem-solving, and with a set of these Wing Slings for each shell, going with wing-rigged boats might start to look a whole lot more feasible at your place, too.

Have a trick that makes travel, well, better, just like this idea? Share your tips--and hacks--in the comments below.

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