While these days, most boats sold aren’t as long as those sold 10-20 years ago… …and the cars have downsized from those sold 20-30 years ago…
…ours still are longer than our current hauler -and all of last 5 vehicles
Absolutely nothing beats a station wagon with a relatively low flat roof. With a low roof I use Thule Side and go as it is easily loaded and slid on the back. Few cars now w/o silly wind fairings above rear window that interfere with loading that way. I use a 2003 Ford Focus ZTW wagon which has a very low level roof line with factory roof rails. When kayaking with various clubs and meetups my fellow kayakers frequently compare my roofline to their much taller SUV’s and comment what a great hauler it is and how easily loaded. It is very similar to Im999’s photo. Again w/o wind fairing to interfere with loading. I always use bow and stern line when traveling at highway speeds.
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If you read the installation instructions for any roof rack sold in the last few years, not using bow and stern lines invalidates your warranty. Most include them.
Also if your kayak overhangs the back of your car by more than a foot or two you should use some sort of flag. DC recently upped its penalty for failure to do so from $50 to $250. State and Federal laws vary and some of them are very involved, but generally any type of flag will keep you from being cited…
Check out the three links on Kayak Racks and Loading for more information: https://www.cpakayaker.com/resources/introduction-to-kayaking-sk101-resources/
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I always travel with front and rear takedowns in place, and my cover has an integrated red flag. But the cover is ugly and doesn’t make for a good photo.
Beautiful boat !! Well done ! I would suggest, for long trips, is it possible to turn the boat bottom up? Less wind resistance, less strain on the ropes. V’ed bow lines (static, non stretch) down to front bumper attachments?
Yours looks beautiful. My largest, longest haul, I had to get back to my truck with the boat. I rented a Ford Fusion, urned the boat upside down on the roof, paying careful attention to structural points of the roof, high density foam blocks betwixt and between the canoe gunwales, the car? 14 plus feet long. The canoe, 20 footer, 3.5 feet wide… V’ed bow and stern, belly lines over the center, hmmmm one trick there that may benefit you… I used the rear seat seat belts for my rear attachments. Side the buckle down so it stays in the car. pull out, extend the rear seat belt to its maximum. Then close the door on the seat belt. It left a 10 inch loop outside the passenger compartment. I used a cam strap over the canoe bottom from seat belt loop on one side to seat belt loop on the other.
Mine did look a little silly going down the road, the boat larger than the car. Humourously, water over the road would have been no problem. The carry capacity of an expedition canoe is such, it could probably carry the car if inverted. Also, I had to lay sideways on the center console to see out under the bow of the boat. Silly, but it worked. Next week that canoe will be in the bed of the pickup, headed west, with 10 feet of canoe sticking out beyond the tail gate, with a nice big orange flag on it.
I regularly run my long kayaks inverted on long trips. It is much better aerodynamics according to a friend who is a physics PhD and she worked at NASA too. I was skeptical until I tried it. Now I swear by it on trips over an hour or two from home or if rain is expected on the road. It is easier with goodboypaddlesports.com racks, but I used it on the shorty spacing for a few years b4 buying the racing V rack for my sea kayaks.
I have a Bolt and transport a 16 ft Canoe. For the front tie down I use straps attached to the 2 diagonal braces under the hood and come out near the wipers, for the back I installed a hitch and use a Big Bed extender in the upright position. You can consider using the tow points on the passenger side of the car. 240-461-1040
Kayaks have an additional aerodynamic advantage, they have an enclosed top. One of the principal features of loading and driving a boat atop a vehicle, is the windshield pushes air, a lot of air, up into the boat. A kayak, the air is striking the enclosed top, a canoe, the air is being pushed up into the open top. My solution has been get the bow of the canoe as close to the roof, and approximately the rear view mirror as is possible. With a 20 foot expedition canoe on the roof of an F-150, (or one 1,100 miles trip using a Ford Fusion) (That was a sight to see!), I can just see the bow when looking at the center rear view mirror, and that leaves 6 plus feet extending beyond the rear bumper at about head height. (Park with great care !!) Mileage on the truck rises, and drive-ability is MUCH easier. Just now on my way home from the Green River in Utah, back to Michigan, my second round trip this year. Is your physicist friend single?
FWIW, my kayaks never do more than short local trips w/o a cockpit cover, like when I need to dry out a cockpit. Which affects some of the windage argument. Each cockpit cover lives in the boat full time, so it is always there.
On those Thule hooks, if they are the ones with an open end replace that part with a clip that closes. There have been unfortunate incidents from the open ended ones that Thule sends coming loose and getting caught in wheel wells. Not a tone of them, but all it takes is one to ruin a boat and/or the car.
My husband and I went to hood loops up front due to that risk, and in this thread I see someone showing a car with stern lines going to a clip under the rear lift gate or trunk.
As to the flag, I have a red strap daisy chained on the rear of my two main boats, pretty much all season. I just tuck it under deck line when I go paddling. It hangs down long enough to make backing up safe and seems to satisfy flag requirements, at least I have never been stopped over it.
This is a party I have to join:
Re carrying kayaks inverted for better aerodynamics, it’s really going to depend on the vehicle, and particularly on the angle of the boat in the carriers and how much rocker it has. I think the best plan is to keep the boat from sticking up too high - cross winds worry me a lot more than air flowing into the cockpit, for example. There’s a good picture around of a highly rockered sea kayak carried deck down,which looks good - the boat behind the wood boat above is deck down on the crossbars, for example. But I see no real advantage to inverting the wood boat in the orientation above.
In fact, I wouldn’t carry a boat inverted on V-bar carriers, the angled bars don’t support the hull fully in that orientation. However, you can adjust boat level on V-bars by sliding the boat fore or aft slightly, it doesn’t take much to adjust its angle of attack, so to speak.
A canoe is a different animal entirely, obviously. The ability to carry flat on cross bars is too good to ignore. However, I have carried a canoe upright on the V-bars above - surprisingly it didn’t feel much different than a kayak, but then I didn’t go very far with it, and it wasn’t raining…