Bow & Stern tiedowns...objective?

They are a waste of time and unnecessary
If you have a quality rack such as Yakama or Thule that has been installed properly and you are using the double loop-strap method with cam-lock buckles. They are completely unnecessary.

I have not used front or rear tie downs for the past twenty years, since I got rid of those old foam blocks which did noting but float around the roof top.

On the other hand if you don’t have a rack system that you have confidence in then you better use them.

Cheers,

JackL

Objective?
That’s an easy one.



KEEPING YOUR BOAT(S) ON THE ROOF!



Kayaks are amazingly aerodynamic (am currently averaging 24.6MPG with a Subaru Outback in WV) but canoes are a different story. My personal experience is that canoes create significant up-force at 70 MPH, and if your front cam strap buckle fails or the webbing wears you will experience canoe flight.



Jim

Better safe than sorry.

irresponsible opinions
Respectfully I think you are wrong.

There’s a few assumptions that underly your statement. 100% reliability for both straps. 100% predictability for driving conditions, consistancy in stress loads across all vehicles and payloads.

That’s a lot of assumptions. Which is why everyone wears seatbelts,or dare I say it,wears a pfd.

Get a canoe on top of a roof rack thats the minimum distance apart then drive 65mph with a semi passing you.

Get a canoe on a roof rack where one of the cam straps is a bit sticky from corrosion and a passing semi torques it.

There’s a public responsibility to not allow this stuff to go flying off the roof of the car.

Sure it’ll never happen to you. But maybe the person who’s never transported a canoe before on their 1998 family minivan with a quality roof rack attached to the factory rack has our experience,and they’re only driving 10miles from the store to home on the freeway. With no bow/stern line. Do you really want the rest of the folks on the highway to benefit from their learning experience?

How about the motorcyclist behind them?


yep
I wonder how many bicycles have gone ballistic attached with bungies on racks. Any bungie that’s holding something on well is something ready to fly off and smack you in the face if you don’t keep a grip on the hook.

Examine the little bity stitching
… holding your cam buckle to the strap, then ask yourself whether, in good conscience, you should have a some redundancy built into your tied down system.

Just for the heck of it…
the last time this subject came up, and I was called “irresponsible”, etc, etc, and a all around bad guy for not looking out for the tailgaiters behind me, I decided to do a look see at the next race I went to.

I did my look see a couple of weeks ago, and I saw two vehicles with front and rear tie downs. One was a poly kayak on a factory roof rack, and the other was a canoe on foam blocks, (which I wouldn’t have if I had twenty different tiedowns).

All the rest including several C-2 cruisers, one Olympian with a wood C-1, and bunch of other experienced kayakers and canoers did not have any.

That kind of tells me that all these guys have faith in their systems.

If you want to wear the paint off the front hood of your vehicle, and you don’t have faith in your rack and tiedowns that is fine with me, but I’ll repeat; if your rack is one with the vehicle, and you have them strapped down properly, there is no need for front or rear tiedowns.



Cheers,

JackL

At times I have had two kevlar QCC’s and a Kevlar 17 foot Jensen up there without them.

specifics/generalities
So how many of the aforementioned canoes/kayaks are mounted on a racks set the minimum distance apart?

with bow and stern lines you will keep a
better hold on your canoe. this way you will always have a canoe, instead of one day, owning briefly a glider that looks an awful lot like a canoe.



:slight_smile:



the line is mm’s thick, it can’t be obstructing your view that much.




Lane avoidance maneuver
Being interested in automotive handling for a long time, one thing I’ve thought would be fun to see would be typical vehicles with rack-mounted boats sent through some handling cones. I wonder how many boats would still be up there somewhere close to their original positions at the end of the course. Especially the ones with long boats on top of short cars with closely-spaced racks.



Mike

Secure rack
I have seen the result of a so called secure rack ripped off of a car. It did a lot of damage to the roof of the car and to the kayaks. Luckily it missed the cars behind but not by much. The owner did not have front or rear tie downs and lift generated by the 70 mph speed tore the rack bolts through the roof. I dont know if he was passed by a semi or if a head wind was present but it came off and bow lines would have prevented the incident.

Wearing paint off front hood…
4 inch piece of pipe insulation around rope where it meets the hood…no paint loss, installed in 10 seconds on 2 boats,no paint loss, no problem.



BOB



P.S. I have collected so many bungie cords off the highway that I don’t even bother to stop & pick them up anymore. Whatever they were supposed to secure, they didn’t.

Holy crap Lee
I suppose you want me to take my tape measure to this coming Saturdays race and measure everyones rack ???



I have mine spaced for my bike carriers, and that reminds me I don’t use front and rear tiedowns on the bikes, cross country skies, lumber, doors and all the other junk I carry up there.



I have about ten different sets of various length cam-lock straps in my two paddle-stuff boxes which I never leave home without, along with epoxy, a couple of cables and a half dozen same keyed locks, duct tape, various yak and canoe repair parts and pieces, some bungee with plastic hooks for instant do-it yourself deck mount stuff, a leatherman, visegrips, channel-locks, some nylon 1/4" line, but sorry no front and rear tiedowns.



I hate to admit it, but I did once stop and help a guy by using some of my rope to help him tie the front and rear of his canoe down, and I also guess shouldn’t admit it but at several put-ins I have advised people using blocks that they should have front and rear tie downs.

Cheers,

JackL

gee whillickers Jack

– Last Updated: May-09-05 1:44 PM EST –

given the consequences of 75lb airborne canoes why would you state such a generality in a general suggestions forum?
When you reference your experience or racers you've just left the context of someone asking questions. Most of the time I'll buzz around with only roof straps on my kayaks in a Malone J-rack. But if someone who has to ask the question "what's a bow/stern line for?" I'd want THEM to not learn on others lives.
It makes a huge difference if the rack is close together or not, you know that.
I'm taken aback by your cagegorical statement they are unnecessary. I've worked in a couple paddle shops and been around bike shops to hear the near miss stories with flying racks. You've obviously heard a few flying canoe/kayak stories. Given the the likelyhood that this would occur at high speeds that's the time when the consequences for others is the greatest. Sure you and I can judge what we have because we've used it. But I sure wouldn't want someone who's asking to get a categorical answer no when they don't know.

sounds doable
The idea with the bow line is to provide greater support/leverage but your idea would be in the belts and suspenders mode of thinking about things. Assuming a webbing strap wouldn’t tear the hood or the otherwise mess with what’s underneath. Also if you want a smaller line check out all the fancy spectra/vectran types. A thin 3/16" line could be stronger than a 1/4"-3/8" polyethelene line. Seems to me if you’re bothered by a bow line you’ll be bothered by anything but the idea of making the attachment easy to use is worthwhile.

If you have a rack…
… read the directions. I know Yakima says you must use bow and stern lines in conjuction with it’s hull raisers.



For me it’s just piece of mind that I won’t accidently be causing anyone harm. I made a nice set up that takes about 1 min to connect and adjust.

Well
I have Yakima & thule racks. and I use only a Bow Tie down. not so much that i dont trust my racks, but be seeing the guy wire i know what my rack is doing… If i see it go slack, then i know something has shifted… I also have Grill guards that I tie it to so It doesnt rub the paint. i use a Ratchet tie down with a loop on one end, takes about 30 seconds to install… also one huge and I mean HUGE bonus of using a Bow tie down is if you are on a boat ramp like the ones at lake Joccassee they are very steep. If you UN hitch your straps your yack WILL go flying off the back. Now with the Bow line, I undo the saddles and then grab the Bow line and walk it off. It also makes loading easier as you can Walk it on…

tying it down
I’ve used both the V pattern mentioned and an inverted one when I had only one place to secure my canoe to the vehicle. Both work very well. I always test mine. If I can move the car up and down by pushing on the canoe, its ok.

I’ve known of at least 5 cases
Of “properly installed” yakima or thule racks flying off of cars & dumping canoes & kayaks in the middle of the road.



Mine came loose once as well about 6 years ago, and the bow & stern lines saved the day.



Unless your racks loop onto a hard point in the roofline, like they do on Type 4 VW’s, it is a definite possibility, especially on the highway on windy days.



As one friend of mine said: “Bow & stern lines are a social responsibility”



Wayne

If this recreation were a few orders
of magnitude more popular than it is, cartopping of boats may well have been banned by now or at least regulated to some minimal standards for rack strength and spacing and so forth.



I cartopped a folbot double on the big sedan I had at the time for a season, not going very far. Lengths of the two were similar, but the roofline of the car allowed the racks to only be spaced about two feet apart. I didn’t like the looks of that at all, I used bow/stern lines and it went down the road fine but it still wouldn’t have held up to much evasive maneuvering I’m quite certain. Don’t do that anymore, got a trailer instead.



Mike

you have a point
I was almost tempted to follow a fellow all the way home (but I was on a bicycle) as he was transporting four sheets of 1/4" 4’x8’ ply on the roof of his volvo (held with twine and one drivers arm) and some boards sticking out the passanger window a little over a foot(that missed me and a line of parked cars by a half a foot).

After seeing that kids car roof stove in from the loose spare tire I’m even more paranoid about unsecured roof racks.