I’ll always use a bow tie down, but will admit to not always using a stern line, at least on shorter trips. I’ll use both on long hauls for sure. The visual assurance from seeing a bow line always makes me feel a little better when going down the road.
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Tom
What are you using for grippy gunwale protectors?
Jeff
Hi Jeff. I use pieces of flexible clear plumbing tubing, usually sold by the foot at hardware stores. I buy a few feet and cut 6-8 inch sections with a hacksaw and then slit with a utility knife. I usually buy 1 1/4 inch diameter but 1 inch might be a better fit on some boats. They stretch out a little over time. Tom
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I do not use bow and stern lines on my pickup truck. Very large canoe I tie opposing diagonal lines to the ends of the thwarts and down to the truck mounted 4 hole boat cleats. Each line oposes front to rear and left to right, those four basic attachments. Then I throw a ‘belly band’, square, across the upturned hull from front cleat to front cleat, and snug it down hard. On extremely long trips I will ocassionally throw a second belly band toward the rear, from cleat to cleat. This summer alone the canoe traveled some 9,000 miles on the top of the truck. Always a red flag dangling from the stern, 4 plus feet beyond the rear bumper.
Always, always and always. Did I mention always. For the small effort required the extra safety makes for comfortable driving.
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Always for me. While I’ve “never had a problem in tens of thousands of miles and decades of hauling”, I still feel it’s the right thing to do to protect the drivers around me.
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We always use them no matter the rack or the distance. It’s just like wearing a seat belt. Would you drive 1 mile without it? Accidents can happen any time. I’ve watched boats being pulled sideways by the air flowing over them going down the highway and I just prayed it did not let go while I was still behind them. It’s just that extra bit of insurance.
Equating bow and stern lines to a seat belt is silly and dramatic.
The primary hold down is straps. Bow and stern lines are a backup and will only be needed if the primary straps are not secured properly or something fails
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Like Celia says, I always use bow lines and run them criss-crossed. I don’t bother with stern lines but I also use three straps to secure the kayaks to the cross-bars. That’s with our 17+ foot sea kayaks. We drove cross-country from Virginia to Washington in 2017, often at 75+ mph and they never budged. I also have a Wave Sport Diesel 80 whitewater boat, and I don’t use bow lines on it because it’s too short to make a difference. But again, three straps across it.
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The real reason we tie down with bow and stern lines is simply leverage. Sea kayaks are long, mine is 18 feet, some are longer. Put that on a rack maybe 3 feet between bars and you have a long lever acting on the rack when you hit that pothole or bump. We had a canoe pull the rack off a car long time ago when we were on a bumpy road 40 years ago. We snug the lines until they are just tight, they don’t “hold the boat on the car”, they keep the boat pitching with the car. It also reduces the chance of damage to the boat by the rack by reducing the racks leverage on the boat.
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Discussions about bow and stern lines are not silly, and these discussions never seem to land on the question of redundancy. I don’t quite understand that.
I had this conversation with a friend recently who equates every discussion like this with whether ropes or straps. It has NOTHING to do with the tie down that is used. Just about how many there are.
Two straps or ropes in a place where one is needed means that if you have a nasty surprise with one of them, the boat is not immediately at risk of being a loose cannon at 65 mph. Bow lines give you more time to pull over time in case there is a surprise failure at one of the strapping points. In the case of canoes it also prevent the canoe from trying to become a kite, something which can happen surprisingly fast with an ultralight. I also run double strapping thru the thwarts for canoes BTW.
I don’t use stern lines because by the time I hit the highway for a long trip I have four straps on each boat, not including the one over each cockpit cover, as well as the bow lines. And I don’t have a great place to anchor it anyway.
But this stuff is not about whether someone has great straps, ropes or anything else involved. IMO it is purely about redundancy for the surprises you cannot anticipate.
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If the manufacturer says use bow and stern lines and you don’t. Then the boat flies off for what ever reason you car insurance might not pay. You failed to secure your boat per manufacture guidelines. Now your in BIG trouble if you hurt some one. By by bank account, investments, house, garnished wages.
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Any sources of this happening or is it a guess?
Which manufacturer? Car? Rack? Boat?
This comes up periodically, I actually sat down and went thru some fine print several years ago. Here is what I found. Probably still the same.
For car manufacturers this is mostly relevant for something which is disappearing from cars, a raised rail. Subaru still has them but most current models are a recessed rail. In the case of a raised rail there will be, buried somewhere in all the language, information on the max load the rails can take. Blow by that limit and have an accident where the rails themselves tear out, in the worst case scenario the manufacturer will claim that the user was in error. Once the manufacturer says that your insurance company will be more than happy to agree.
In many/most cases the weight limit for the raised rails will be less than that for the cross bars.
For raised rails you have footpacks, which I suppose could be a problem and do have weight limits if you look closely. But thru several cars and both Yakima and Thule components, those foot packs have been incredibly solid in my experience.
For cars with a recessed rail, the more normal situation now, the focus turns to the fit kits and/or foot pad packs used to affiix the cross bars to the recessed rail. In general the lower weight limit will be in those components especially the podium, the cross bars often have a higher capacity. Blow by the weight limit and it doesn’t matter how you had the boat tied down, in the case of a really bad accident that will be the easiest place for fingers to point. Regardless of whether those mounts held.
After that you get to the rack itself and how the boat is tied down. If you get a Thule rack setup, saddles or my Hullivator cradles etc, the package includes straps for bow and stern. Same was true when we got our Yakima components for earlier cars. If the full kit includes those two lines and you clearly have not used them, in the case of a bad accident it won’t take much for a lawyer/insurance company to see the opening.
Now that said, I am one who uses bow but not stern line, And we had a fender bender once in a car, at highway speeds (it was with the guide rails, long story), with two boats on the roof using bow but not stern lines. The footpacks were ones made to attach to raised rails, at that point Yakima. Absolutely nothing budged.
But we were also traveling with two straps per normal tie down spot, for both boats, rather than the usual one I see people use. With both straps ending in being run to the raised rail after securing around the cross bar. I can’t vouch for how well the boats would have held if we had only the single strap per location I usually see. The bow lines were never stressed that we could tell.
One person here has indicated they knew a couple of folks where a rather long bow or stern line ended up in a wheel well with unfortunate results. If one got loose and involved another car, they may have the rest of this story. Or took out the windshield of the paddler’s car. That is why I will only use bow lines to hood loops, seen too many stern lines dancing down the road loose and obviously would be really bad up front.
I should note that the kits they send with Thule or Yakima use hooks that are NOT closed for the bow and stern lines, a really bad idea. So there is some irony in their language saying to use such tie downs since what they send is frankly unsafe. But they do say it.
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I am fully aware that the parts and systems have ratings, that is pretty obvious.
I’m asking for evidence to the conjecture that a claim will be denied from the absence of a bow or stern line.
This isn’t a debate of the merits, it is about the drama/scare tactics that you will be in financial peril should you not use them
From Thule:
“No warranty is given for defects resulting from conditions beyond Thule’s control including, but not limited to, misuse, overloading, or **failure to assemble, mount or use the product in accordance with Thule’s written instructions or guidelines included with the product or made available to the purchaser”.
From Yakima:
“In addition, this warranty does not cover problems resulting from conditions beyond Yakima’s control including, but not limited to, theft, misuse, overloading, or failure to assemble, mount or use the product in accordance with Yakima’s written instructions or guidelines included with the product or made available to the original purchaser.”
You can be assured that auto insurers are well aware of the instructions and warnings associated with third party auto accessories and will look upon any damage to your car of others as negligence on your part and will deny coverage due to a rack or other component failure. In addition property damage or personal injury due to an improperly secured load is considered a traffic offence at minimum and can result in criminal or civil penalties. If at all competent the injured party’s lawyer will consider whether or not the product in question was used in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions.
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Interesting that the usage guidelines on page 6 say that long loads including kayaks must be tied down “to the bumpers or tow hooks both front and rear”. So folks like myself that use underhood tie-downs (such as those sold by Yakima and Thule) are apparently not in compliance.
@TomL
I had missed that. Then again, with most new cars I don’t quite see how anything is supposed to be tied to a bumper, or it being a good idea if you could. The last bumper I had which would be a good tie down was the rolled metal one in my 1987 Subaru GL wagon. Since then we have drifted to plastic covers over a structure intended to crumple and continuous surfaces so you cannot actually go around it. And tow hooks have been disappearing from cars - my last two Rav4’s had them as did the Subaru Outback before it. But I last check indicated they were at the least damned hard to find in the 2020 Rav4. If they are somewhere under there they fail the accessibility test.
That sentence continues with or tow hooks of the vehicle. Pretty sure an underhood tie down would pass muster.
It goes on with instruction to remove the Thule rack when not in use. Why? Mine has been on my car since it was installed.
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Insurance has to pay.