Roof rack

When using a roof rack, you have to consider how you tie down the kayak.

Some vehicles, especially light trucks, come with manufacturer-supplied roof racks. These are not always suitable for carrying kayaks, since they are literally decorative rather than functional. The factory racks usually have a low carrying capacity and are, honestly, quite flimsy. One way to use a factory roof rack is to cut crosspieces out of wood (say a 2x6) so that it is curved on the underside to match the roofline closely. Cover the bottom of the wood with closed cell foam or carpeting to protect the roof. This will spread the load over a very large area and will not stress the roof. Now use U bolts to attach the wood crosspieces to the factory crossbars. That way, the load of the kayaks is carried by the wood and the factory crossbars only hold the assembly in place. You can then attach any form of saddle or other widget you wish to make to the top of the wooden crosspieces.

There are many companies making roof racks for cars and trucks. The two big names in the business are Thule and Yakima. Both produce high-quality and expensive rack systems. They provide rack adapters to custom fit their products to many models of cars. If you buy a rack from one of these makers, you can probably use the rack on a new car by simply buying a new "fit kit" - the bits that customize the rack to a specific vehicle.

These rack systems also have lots of kayak-specific add ons. These include saddles, rollers and other bits that hold sea kayaks, whitewater kayaks and other gear. These bits are good, but paddlers are increasingly finding them expensive.

One way to reduce the high cost of these racks is to buy second hand, where possible, and only get the basic towers and bars. You can make a lot of other bits to carry your kayak. You can easily make a saddle out of wood:

In this case, wood struts are cut to fit onto the bar and be held in place with U bolts. Seat belt webbing is attached to the wood and makes a simple saddle that supports the hull. When making this sort of saddle, one only has to ensure that the webbing generously clears the side of the hull and the hull bottom is clear of the rack crossbar. As well, ensure that the rack crossbar is high enough off the roof of the vehicle to prevent the bottom of the wood pieces from hitting.

If you use webbing and drive without a kayak on the rack, the webbing will flap around a lot. You could put a loop of bungee around the crossbar to hold the webbing in place. If you do, twist the webbing so that it doesn't vibrate and hum in the wind. The bungie will have to be tight to keep the webbing from untwisting. Another approach is to use something other than webbing. I saw one rack like this where the builder used 3/16" polycarbonate sheet about 3"-4" wide and covered it with carpeting. This had to be heated at the ends a bit to get it to bend to match the vertical supports and keep its curvature. Alternatively, you could cut the tops of the vertical pieces to match a plastic sheet with a single curve.