My 2008 Forester came with installed roof racks and a warning about them giving me the impression that they are of little value UNLESS I buy and install another roof rack apparatus that will attach to the one already there? Is that right? All I wanted to do was to haul my canoe about.
You need a canoe rack. Having the roof racks makes that cheaper/easier to build up than otherwise. Look into the mighty mites (?) clamps and then the associated canoe mount from Yakima.
It's kinda confusing to figure out all the stuff you need, but not that hard. For me and my roof bike rack, I needed 4 mighty mounts for the Subaru (car specific) to provide mounting points on the cross bars, then the bike rack screwed to those.
I suspect the canoe mount is quite similar. Check out Yakima's web site, tell em what car you have and what you wanna carry, and select the mighty mount option for attachment, and off ya go.
Can't you simply put it upside down on the crossbars and tie/bungee it in place?
Dan D '99 Impreza 2.5 RS (son's) Central NJ USA
That's what I do with my kayak.
Can't you simply put it upside down on the crossbars and tie/bungee it in place?
Dan D '99 Impreza 2.5 RS (son's) Central NJ USA
This works fine for short trips. I bought Yakima fittings when we driving 700-800 miles or more. They're more secure at highway speeds.
You can easily use the racks you have if you do a thing. I use pipe insulation on the cross bars with tie wraps. The main thing is the racks are mounted not sturdy enough to depend on them to hold the canoe. What you need to do is put a bow line to the tie down hook under the car in the front and the ba-------------------------------------------------------------------, oops cat problems, anyway, and the back. With the front and the back tied down and ropes or straps across the racks you can take it anywhere. I put three kayaks on mine at times. Don't depend on bungees. You can use them, but back them up with rope or straps. I find rope the best, but I was a good scout and can tie knots. You need to learn a couple simple knots for the ropes. The most important is a truckers hitch or what I call an oakie truckers hitch which is easier to tie in my opinion. The truckers hitch allows to to tighten down the rope in a controlled way.You must learn this or it's variant. That's why some people use straps.
For a good tutorial on a truckers hitch:
It wasn't a kayak, just a bright yellow 25' canoe I hauled on top of a '70 Duster back in the early 70's. No roof rack, just a packing blanket folded thick and rope to the bumpers using that knot. I made one rope run from the front bumper to the back end of the canoe to keep it from sliding back as it overhung the front by a couple of feet.
As there was no daytime speed limit and gas was cheap, I'd drive it in excess of 100 mph at times for over 300 miles (spend the time on the water, not driving was the name of the game). No problems keeping the combo together, but I did get some real funny looks from people I passed.
You make an excellent point. One doesn't really need all this fancy expensive stuff to carry a canoe or kayak. One does need a little common sense to tie it down properly though and I suspect that's a lot of the reason a lot of people have to get some of this real fancy rack stuff. And watching people try to secure their boots on the car at the boot ramp indicates to me, maybe it's a good thing these things are available.
Sorry about the boot instead of boat. I do too much computering. :O)
One doesn't really need to learn the truckers hitch. You really only have to do the loop part.
Here's how it works. Run the end of the rope though your tie down point after securing the other end first to a tie down point.
Now reach up above the tie down point of the rope and tie some kind of loop in the rope, high enough above the tie down point to allow the rope to cinch up. I like a single loop slip type so it comes undone easily. But anything will do. Now run the end of the rope though the loop and pull the end of the rope to tighten your load. Tie off the end of the rope anyway you want so your rope stays snug. This is the secret to tying things down as you can cinch your load down. If you just tie a rope off without cinching it down, you can't snug your load and things can come apart. Boat's need to be snug, but not overly tight or you may warp them.
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