by Keith Rodgers
Almost every one of us needs to haul our kayak around from time to time and the usual way we do this is by tying it on the top of a vehicle and hoping it stays on for the ride. Whether you do this a couple of times a year, over a short distance only, or many times and over thousands of kilometres, the consequences of a kayak flying off en route are potentially severe – in fact, possibly disastrous or even fatal. So it makes sense to get the right equipment and learn the best methods of securing your boat so that it stays on through wind and rain, alpine turns, emergency stops and the many other perils of the open road.
In this article I discuss the best ways of handling the task of getting a kayak up onto the top of a car or SUV and securing it there. Although the intended travelling distance actually makes little difference to the techniques used to properly secure the boat, long journeys, particularly across international borders can raise other considerations so we will take a look at those too. Pick-up trucks and vehicles with towed multi-boat trailers present their own special challenges, which I will leave for another day.
The “bare minimum” approach sometimes seen, when a kayak is strapped to the top of a vehicle lacking any kind of roof-rack or shaped foam pads, is to place a couple of towels fore and aft, put the kayak on top (usually upside-down, as if it were a canoe) pass a rope through the car windows and several times around the kayak and cross your fingers. Provided you also secure the boat to the car at bow and stern a kayak tied with this method will at least be prevented from coming completely adrift and threatening the life and limb of following traffic. The towels might protect the car’s paintwork but will do little to improve the adhesion of the boat to the roof. Should the kayak slide off, it will be dragged along-side by the bow and stern ties and probably reduced to scrap. All-in-all, a method to be considered for emergency use only, over a short distance and at a slow pace.
The presence of a roof rack, either built-in or retro-fitted, opens up our options. Almost all SUVs and many cars have at least built-in side rails, to which a pair of load-bearing cross-bars can be attached. Be aware however that, on some vehicles, the side rails are largely cosmetic. At 100 km/h wind-pressure on a large load, such as a kayak, can be high and cases have been reported of the rails the cross-bars and the load all flying merrily off. If you have any concerns, use cross-bars that have their own feet. The feet may attach to the vehicles guttering, window edging or directly to the roof. They may be available with a protective, lockable, covering. Thule, Yakima, Inno and Canadian Tire all offer feet-and cross-bar systems. The first three manufacturers also offer a wide range of specialized fittings that attach to their cross bars to carry loads ranging from skis to bicycles – as well as kayaks. With cross-bars in place you can consider kayak carriers that hold the boat firmly but nicely between padded fittings, or with rollers replacing the pads, the kayak can slid up onto the rack instead of having to be lifted bodily. Easier still, but more expensive, are hydraulic arms that can swing down the side of the vehicle, receive the kayak, and gently raise it into position. Most of these systems incorporate straps for fixing the kayak to the bar and carrier, but usually you will have to buy your own front and rear tie-downs.
My own system is a low-cost, high-safety mix. I use a pair of square-section cross-bars on feet that are screwed directly into the car’s roof. The low-cost part comes from the foam cradles (under $20 from MEC) in which my kayak sits. Good quality straps, replaced every few years, go around the bars and the boat. The shaped cradles allow a pretty tight cinching of the straps (be careful! – if you have a plastic boat or a light fibreglass lay-up care must always be take to avoid hull deformation when strapping down your boat) and with fore and aft tie-downs in place I have covered a lot of ground without incident – most years in excess of 5,000 kilometres. The foam cradles slip easily on or off the bars when needed. This is useful if you find wind noise annoying – true, the bars themselves will produce some, but bars with permanent cradles and fittings will produce a lot more. On the downside, the foam cradles do not make it practical to slide the boat on or off and at the end of a long and tiring paddle I sometimes find myself thinking about this as I prepare to lift and heave my boat up into the air. Whatever method you adopt, the use of straps or ropes to attach the bow and stern of the kayak to the front and back of the vehicle is of critical importance, not so much to protect your boat, important though that may seem, but to protect others coming behind you from meeting up with an 18-foot kayak, possibly trailing the remnants of a metal rack and cart wheeling towards them at 100 km/h. Canada, the US and Mexico, and their provinces and states, all have laws and regulations dealing with what may be put on a vehicle roof, how it should be attached, what percentage of overhang is permitted and so on. You don’t have to be a lawyer, police officer or a civil engineer to tie a kayak on your car roof (or at least, not yet) but following the advice in this article could be helpful if you do not want to find yourself dealing with the unpleasant consequences envisaged above.
With your rack and tie-down method worked out and your kayak safely on your vehicle’s roof it can be tempting to treat that empty cockpit and hatch space as handy luggage compartments. True, a PDF, your paddling jacket and a sponge tucked away in the rear hatch are unlikely to cause a problem, but be aware that any extra weight in the boat will put additional strains on the roof rack and its fastenings and also might possibly affect the cornering abilities of the vehicle. In addition, items placed in the cockpit can be vacuumed out very efficiently by the wind effect at speed. A cockpit cover is a good idea – it keeps water out and may help aerodynamically by eliminating the turbulence of the open cavity. But be aware that these covers can become detached and for this reason should always be clipped onto a deck line or fastened in some way.
Once on the road keep an eye on the kayak, some slight movement in wind-gusts is to be expected, but the boat should remain pretty much in a straight line fore and aft with the car. And yes, she should travel with her bow to the front – transporting a boat “back to front” could bring bad luck, say some old sailors and besides it just looks wrong, so why take a chance? When stopping for a break, take a moment to check that the straps and tie-downs have not worked loose. If stopping overnight with the boat left in a hotel car park, you might be concerned about theft. The good news is that this seems to be still a rare event, probably due to the fact that it’s not that easy to make off with a kayak. You can make it harder by parking as close to the hotel entrance as possible or at least under a light. The use
of a lasso-loop cable locked to the roof-rack is a good idea (but only if the rack itself is either locked or looks very tough to detach from the vehicle). Remove anything valuable you are carrying in the hatches, or on the boat (paddles and compasses come to mind) and either lock them in the trunk or take them into your room. Mention to the desk clerk that you have a boat on your vehicle.
If the worst happens, your home or personal insurance might cover the loss – this is something you could establish in advance with your agent. If your boat is new and expensive you could ask to have a rider added to your policy, usually at a modest cost. In any event, at the hotel have on hand some means of describing to boat to the police and proving your ownership of it. Most boats have a serial number on them somewhere: you should record this. Some paddlers write their name and address, in waterproof ink, on a label and stick it on the underside of the deck in the front hatch – easily seen with a small hand-mirror but unlikely to be spotted by the thief. In the event you need to make an insurance claim your case will be considerably helped if you can show that you took reasonable precautions against theft. Tell them about that lasso cable or even show them a photograph of it in place. If you are planning on crossing into the US be aware that Canada imposes an import duty and taxes on kayaks purchased abroad. This will only be an issue when returning to Canada, but it is possible that the border agent may ask for proof that the boat was purchased in this country (this has happened to me only once). The best answer is to have the receipt to hand, failing this, at least be prepared to describe where and when you bought the boat and point out any modifications you might have made to it.