@yknpdlr said:
In 2017 I drove from northern NY state to Whitehorse and Dawson City, Yukon and returned. I had a 23’ C4 canoe on top of my Forester. The webbing straps attached to a rope to hold down the bow came through the gap between the hood and the fender and neither webbing nor rope ever touched any painted surface.Sorry no front view photos.
Same here with our 2014 Forester. Many thousands of miles with as many as three boats secured the same way
Last year I tried moving my bow/stern lines back to the crossbars on the roof rack. My theory was that this was even better at keeping the boats secure from fore/aft shifts, especially if one of the straps around the hull failed.
But now that spring is around the corner I’m wondering if this is a good idea. The configuration described above does not provide any downward force, but is that the purpose of the bow/stern straps?
Try for the most possible redundancy. Go through your straps and imagine each one failing independently. Do the others provide enough support if one fails? However unlikely, what about two failing? What if your rack comes loose from the car? Also very unlikely (if properly installed!) but I’ve been around long enough not to quickly dismiss possibilities. Ideally you don’t want to have all your straps/ropes attached only to the rack. Having some attached directly to the vehicle adds valuable redundancy.
The main purpose of fore/aft straps on long boats is to keep the bow from lifting at highway speeds and/or strong wind gusts. This force can be quite strong at times and essentially wants to “pull” the rack off the car vertically. The bow sticking out front of your vehicle has a lot of leverage under those conditions. This is especially important when the cradles aren’t spaced very far apart - which is limited by your vehicle and rack design. Similarly, on bumpy roads the bow/stern tie-downs limit the amount of “rocking” that occurs, which can set up damaging momentum in extreme cases.
The way you describe, you are indeed countering the movement fore/aft, but have nothing to deal with most of what I’ve described. If your setup is particularly prone to (or you’re just worried about) the boat sliding, instead of relocating the straps just add another pair that goes to a point as directly below the bow and stern attachment points as possible. When roof topping with J-cradles, I try to cross the straps so that there is also some force pulling the boat against the cradle. So the passenger side bow strap, for example, would be attached somewhere near the bumper on the driver’s side and vice-versa. Loops that go under your hood are a good idea here, as they also limit the length of strap/rope required to a length that won’t get caught under a tire if it comes loose.
