Picking up a new trailer next week to haul my Wenonah Vagabond Canoe. The bars on the trailer are spaced 6 feet apart, however I still intend to use bow and stern lines. Is there any reason not to use cam buckle straps for the bow and stern lines? Also, with 6 feet of space in between the bars do I really need gunwale brackets/load stops or can I get by without them? Thanks!
why lines bow and stern
my trailer doesnt allow that. I do use safety lines from thwarts to the upright supports on my trailer.
If you can get a vertical run on the line from bow and stern to an attachment on the trailer bow and stern and not a parallelogram lines may be of some value.
And we don’t have enough information on your gunwales and what the trailer bars are made of. Metal vs metal slides laterally very easily… So does vinyl over metal…
I use loadstops when I have enough and carpet the trailer with old carpeting when I don’t so there is less likelihood of lateral movement.
Nothing as unsweet as one end of your canoe sliding slowly off the trailer. ( Its happened)
Also look at outfitters arrangements on their trailers. Granted the boats are heavier.
You can. Not sure why you would.
Maybe you don’t have practice with good knots? Go ahead and use cam straps. Rope is a whole lot more convenient for that purpose, but only if you know what to do with it.
As Kim said, you don’t want the straps to act as a parallelogram if the boat tries to slide end-wise. So if the rear tie-down(s) run forward to reach the trailer, make the front one(s) run backward. That way they oppose each other and if the boat moves so that one tends to loosen, the other will tighten.
Kim is right about the variable need for gunwale stops, depending on how slick the contact is between gunwales and bars. I’ve seen rubber padding on trailer cross bars that grips gunwales quite well, but you might have something else. On a trailer, lifting the boat into place when fixed gunwale stops are used is easier than doing it on a car’s roof, so there’s no reason to avoid using them for the sake of loading ease. A few wraps of rope around the bar will actually work pretty well if you don’t have something better.
The outfitters around here use methods that I’d never copy myself. Their boats are never secured tightly, but their trailers have center supports and the tie-downs are arranged to keep the boat from moving away from that support, so even if tie-downs are loose, the boats can’t slip off. Having a boat’s hull or gunwales loosely bouncing against the steel center supports of a trailer is of no concern to outfitters, but most people wouldn’t do that with their own boats. For outfitters, the tie-down method is all about speed.
Thanks
for the input. The bars are rubber coated. The trailer is the 2 boat version shown here:
http://www.paddleva.com/shop/app02322-load-rite-trailers-load-rite-kayak-trailer-2-boat#.Vf7fd-jD_MI
Since the bars are spaced 6 ft and my boat is 14 ft I was thinking I could run the line from the rear of the boat forward and the line from the front of the boat rearward, however now that I look at it I realize the lines would be almost horizontal relative to the ground so it probably wouldn’t do much good. Maybe one rope tied from the front of the boat to the trailer tongue just for added security? Or as Kim suggested, safety lines from the thwarts to the uprights on the trailer?
i think you will be fine without
loadstops. the chances of a slideoff lateral are jut about nil… you will notice before the boat has any chance to jump those little wingy things at the end
Just run a line or two from the thwarts to the crossbars on the bottom of the trailer for extra security… What you want to avoid is fore and aft movement
I don’t trailer my canoes, but…
– Last Updated: Sep-21-15 8:57 AM EST –
if I did, I would use my load stops.
With them, the canoe can not move an inch in any direction.
But I guess you would need cross bars that accepted them
Jack L