Thread: Roofracking Canoes and small boats

The hood straps are brilliant!
We recently moved an 18ft, 80+ pound Grumman sailing canoe 900 miles on the roof of our Honda Fit. We have Thule load bars and used ratchet straps on each bar. Then a double line to the emergency tow eye screwed into the front bumper and a hook around some stout bit of bodywork, on the other side, under the bumper. Single line in the rear. The rig was rock solid at highway speed.
The car did great although gas mileage was down by 30% and the aluminum canoe is very noisy at 65mph.

One trick I use on cars with plastic bumpers is to hook the line to some strong metal bit under the bumper but run the tiedown rope through a length of good quality foam pipe insulation to keep the line from chafing the painted bumper.

New drawing of Beth on roofrack (attachement).

I do the same with the emergency tow points underneath.
This was when i was using soft racks


I still use the front and rear tow points but now i have a proper set of Thule racks and canoe cradles.
And i made up this rig to help me load the canoe on my own


Revised


and with a strap which hooks onto the rack to stop it falling off the back


And i use this to push her around like a wheel barrow (which has recently broken )

Here's an article in the Open Canoe Group's newsletter, Gossip, about how a member loads his 16' sailing canoe single handed onto his roofrack.

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Brian

A rig to get the boat on the roof can be helpful.

However as the boat is so light - usually under 50lbs - I usually put it on the ground beside and slightly behind the car so I can lift the front of the canoe up onto the back roofrack and put it down.

Then walk to the back of the canoe and push it forward on the racks.

It can be a bit tricky in some tightly packed car lots. In that case I usually carry the whole thing and put one end on the rear rack and the other end on the ground. Then give it a shove.

MIK