Tying Down Your Kayak On Your Car

From Niftytricks

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The definition: If this isn’t essential, I don’t know what is. This trick is for those who are starting out canoeing, those who are having trouble finding the best way to tie canoes onto a roof rack, or for those canoers that just got their drivers license. This trick is also for anyone who has experienced a flying canoe or kayak going over the top of the car after sharply braking the vehicle.

Preparation: First off you are going to need a vehicle to put your kayaks on. If the vehicle does not have roof racks, you can buy some that will attach onto the inside of the doorframes, that are attached like so.

Roofracks attached to a car's raingutter

You are also going to need some straps or rope. Most commonly people use a cam strap to hold their boats onto their roof racks but rope works just as well if you know a couple good knots.

One can attach canoes onto the roof racks by just setting them ontop withe hull down. Howevr if you want to transport morethen just one boat, or you want to make the kayaks more secure and safer, you can buy some “uprights”. These are metal bars with steel loops on the top that go perpendicular to the roof bar cross sections.

Padded upright

The uprights are not too expensive and very effective. It is recommended that the roof bars should be padded. The padding provides more friction between the bars and the boats and also helps to limit scratching. We have padded these bars ourselves.

If you are going to carry more then three kayaks then you will want to “sixty-nine” them. This means that the cockpits face each other and that one kayaks bow is the same direction as the other kayaks stern. If you are carrying two kayaks you can either “sixty-nine” them on one side to use less straps or you can put them on either side of the upright. To start out, thread the straps through the top of the vertical posts then lay the straps down the length of the vehicle before you put the boat on as it is hard to thread the straps through the holes in the uprights once the boat is on the roof rack.

Kayak on its side, hull towards uprights ready to be tied

Once the boat is on, you can pick up the straps and take them over the top of the kayak to where the roof racks are attached to the car.

Smaller boats should be on the outside of the stack. This ensures that a larger boat doesn’t stop the straps applying pressure to a smaller boat nearer to the uprights.

Tip: If your boat has handles or security loops, you can thread the straps through them just as an extra careful measure. This does, however, take up more strap length, especially if the handles are on the end of a long boat.

Cam strap through security bar

When putting the strap through the cam on the other end it is important to guess how much strap is going to be taken up when you pull the strap tight. When the boats are tight it is important that the buckle ends up close to the roof bars. This is to allow the maximum amount of strap after the buckle which in turn allows you enough to tie on your paddle(s).

Finish up by tying on the paddles with the excess strap. If there is no excess, put the paddles inside your car or get a piece of rope or another set of straps.

Paddle tied on and ready to rock

A common mistake is to forget to thread the straps before putting the kayaks onto the racks. Another common mistake is to end up with the buckles on the cam strap too high so there is no excess to tie the paddle(s).

Straps also come in different lengths. Some are meant for only a single boat. Some are meant for twoboats or larger boats. Having two of a couple different sizes is important.

Tightening: Tighten one strap, but not too tight. Then, move onto the other strap. Tighten this second strap as tight as possible. Then move back to the first strap. You can now tighten this strap as tight as possible without the boat(s) sliding out. If two people are loading boats make sure you coordinate and both pull the straps as tight as possible at the same time. You don’t want to tighten your straps too tight though or you can crush the hull of your kayak, but a crushed hull is better then a crushed windshield of the guy that was behind you.

- Robert H.

Robert H. is an upcoming member to Niftytricks from England so when he says canoe we (in the US) have to think kayak. He paddles mostly in Wales with the Wavesport ZG 54.