Roof rack no roof rack?

We had a 16FT Adventure Canoe and had a ball with it last year. We used the yakima rack system on our PT. We sold the PT, and bought a 2006.5 Kia Optima. So far it does not have a clip for it. We do have another car, but it is a Hyundai Accent which is really too small for a huge heavy canoe.



We sold the Adventure, and we are considering buying a ligher canoe around 14 foot. We looked at the foam blocks and wondered it that would work along with carrying the canoe with the bottom down. If we carry it the other way with the top down it will engulf our little car.



Any suggestions? Thanks so much.

Bottom Down…
…sounds like trouble to me.

The open hull will catch a heck of a lot of wind, not to mention rain; I’d much rather carry it inverted, using either a rack or foam blocks. Make sure you have good noselines, and consider using stern lines too. We’ve carried an 18’ Oneida canoe many, many miles atop a Jetta, inverted - lots of overhang on both ends, so we tied the nose/stern lines to the seats.

small car and big boat…
We hauled a 17 ft aluminum on a Honda civic with a Saris rack without concern (even had 2 of those beasts up there for a couple miles, but can’t recommend that ;^)



A good rack with a good cradle (yak) or gunnel brackets (canoe) makes all the difference. That and don’t forget the bow and stern tie-downs…


Thanks…
Thanks so much! We would love to use the yakima, but it does not offer clips for either car. We will try it the conventional way with foam racks.

Thanks.
We had used the Yakima rack and love it. The Pt Cruiser is not large, but larger than what we have now. We would love to use it again, but for now we have to wait for the clips… Thanks

hooks
Was at arce and saw J hooks screwed into the fender wells on all 4 corners of the car. He raised hood and trunk and hooked boat on. Shut hood and trunk and rope fit between and system worked well. Main thing is to have the I or j hooks really solid into something or bolted.

long boats-short cars?
Our family has passed around a Thule goalpost for use with various small cars. Now we’ve had to have hitches installed for the goalpost but all you need is a class 1 hitch with no wiring since you aren’t towing anything. With one set of loadbars (best route) or foam blocks (watch the roof for flex) on the car and the rest of the weight on the hitch you have good crossbar spread and we’ve loaded several 17 foot canoes on a little Honda and it was solid. If you are going a long distance your little car loaded with the two canoes will search around for the right gear at times if it’s an automatic (hills). The Yakima and Thule hitch mount load systems are both the 2 inch receiver size but getting an adapter for 1 1/4 inch to fit the Class I hitch works great. The hitch mount solves the small car dilema of not enough cross bar spread to support the load and keep it from shifting. With the hitch support in place we couldn’t open the lift gate to the ford focus on one trip but no big deal.

vw beetle
we used to carry our 17’ grumman on top of our beetle using foam blocks. just made sure it was tied down all the way around. didn’t ride too bad at highway speeds except for passing/being passed by a semi. the most suprizing thing that we found was that we got slightly better gas millage with the canoe on than we did with it off!

By the way, I have an Accent and the
roof did NOT hold a 50 pound kayak without making a dent that did not go away. Now I have 4 dents in my roof. I tried poping them out but it didn’t work. Looks really bad because the rest of the car is perfect.