Noodle Rack

Noodles are pretty much required gear on a pontoon boat.  Everyone loves floating with them in the water.  Or smacking each other with them.  Or blowing water through them like a fountain...

The bad thing is they are lightweight, bulky and they blow around easily.  They take up a lot of room inside a boat.  Especially when you have a dozen of them.  They are literally worse than herding cats.  Cats would at least stay on the boat. 

We used to put a strap around the whole group of them (the noodles, not the cats).  But that really only worked after everyone was done using them.  Practically speaking, if a kid can't turn off a light switch, would you expect him to strap in a noodle?  You get what I'm saying.  Noodles are such a great toy to have on a boat.  You HAVE to have some.  But they are a royal pain to keep organized. 

Then I came up with the idea for a noodle rack.  The noodle rack is barely visible in the photo below, but the impact is clearly visible.  A nice neat set of noodles!  The red strap at the top is just used once we are underway to keep the wind from blowing them around.  When we're anchored, the strap comes off, and kids can pull noodles off the rack, or put them back, as much as they desire. 

The series of photos below show how I made the rack.  I used 1/2 inch PVC.  The first photo shows a piece of 1/2 inch PVC with an end cap glued to it.  The PVC pipe fits loosely in the noodle, but the cap is snug.  Its the cap that actually holds the noodle in place.   

  

The picture below is the base of the noodle rack.  I used 90 degree elbows and 3-way tees.  And of course short sections of 1/2 inch pipe to hold everything together.  I think the whole thing cost less than $15 from Menards.  The back two holes are for PVC pipe that I zip tied to the fence on our boat.  The front two holes I ended up facing towards each other with a small section of pipe between them.  This was used as a place to put your foot to help hold the rack in place when you pulled a noodle off.  If you look closely at the photo at the bottom of the page, you will see what I mean.

 

The next photo shows the legs of the rack.  These are where the noodles slide on.  Note the long one in the back.  This is one of the two I used to zip tie it to the boat.  At the time I took this photo, I didn't have enough PVC pipe to put the second one on in the back row.  You can see the empty elbow if you look closely.

And, here's the finished product with noodles all herded neatly in place:

 

I painted the noodle rack black and zip-tied it to the fence and railing of our boat near the back of the boat.  Now when the kids are done, they just slide the noodle on the rack as they walk by.  It takes a little training, because it is slightly more difficult than a light switch, but they catch on pretty quickly. 

When we are all done swimming for the day, we put a strap on the top half of the noodles and wrap it around the Bimini leg so they don't blow over in the wind.

When it was all done, I filled it with sand (for weight) and painted it black.  Here's a photo of it installed on our boat. You can see the foot rest at the bottom.  You step on this to keep it from moving as you pull a noodle off.  You can also see the black pipe that runs up behind the noodles to the top edge of the boat railing.  That's where its zip tied to the boat.