: I'm thinking ahead and wondering the best way to carry a strip boat
: on my jeep while traveling the country 4-8 weeks at a time? At
: present I carry a couple of plastic boats flat on the hull on
: Yakima racks. The racks are bolted to the 3/4" bars I
: installed, anything I do will have to bolt to the bars. Thanks

Hi there

I decided to have a go at building my own custom cradles, but using 1" x 1/4" strip aluminium instead. It worked really well. Each cradle is rigid and very strong. In my case, I was able to bolt it through the rack, because the rack crossbars are thick enough to accommodate two holes and I could slide an insert into the crossbar tube to support the bolts.

Each cradle is in two parts - a piece tailored to fit the hull, and then a J shape outside that to hold it rigid. Bending the aluminium was easy using a vice. Three stainless steel bolts hold it together, and also bolt it to the crossbar.

It cost about NZD20 for a 3 metre strip of aluminium, plus some stainless bolts. I fitted a plastic clip onto a short webbing loop, with a bungee to haul over the kayak, and used contact adhesive to add strips of minicell foam onto the aluminium to protect the hull. The angled cradle makes it easy to put the boat on the rack myself, leaves space for more, and accommodates the J shape which is integral to the strength of the cradle.

Make sure you tether front and back as well though. I did this using John Caldeira's nifty idea of adding a webbing loop on either side of the car's bonnet (hood), for a tether up to the bow, and a further tether from the tow ball to the stern.

For the trip home from our holiday, I took a "she'll be right" attitude because some idiot had pinched my front tether. I drove home without it. After 100km of open road driving, we hit a very strong cross wind while crossing a bridge ... and the rack exploded. The cradles held fine, but the force of the crosswind sheered the bolts clamping the crossbars to the car's roof rails, and the whole assembly took off. Fortunately I still had it tethered at the back, but the kayak took a bit of a hit. A lot less damage than I would have expected (tip of bow was crushed, and a few scratches where the kayak was pivoted on the tow ball-mounted bike rack - it bent a 1" pipe on the bike rack! By rights the kayak should have snapped in half ... phew ...).

I was most embarrassed to have had an unsecured load though. So many people transport kayaks without bow/stern tethers. So please do learn from my mistake!

Regards, Ian