How to transport a kayak without a roof rack

You do not need a roof rack. A foam block kit plus straps through the cabin plus bow and stern lines carries a kayak safely on a bare roof, and it is what most people should buy first. Malone publishes a 55 lb load rating for its standard kit, which covers a typical recreational hull.

The six steps

1. Empty the car first. The straps will run through the cabin, so once the boat is on you cannot open a door. Get everything out now.
2. Put the blocks on the roof, wide apart. Roughly over the door pillars, as far apart as the roof allows. Two blocks close together in the middle of the roof are a pivot, not a support.
3. Load the boat upside down. Hull up, deck down. Polyethylene is strongest that way and the flat deck sits better on foam. Lift with a second person if you have one; if you are alone, rest the bow on the rear of the roof and walk the stern up.
4. Run the straps over the hull and through the car. All four doors open. Over the boat, in one door, across the ceiling, out the other, buckle on the side. Not over the hull — a metal cam sitting on the deck will scuff it. Close the doors on the straps.
5. Add bow and stern lines. From the boat’s grab handles to a metal tow eye or recovery point at each end of the car. Not to a plastic bumper: it will tear.
6. Shove it. Push the boat hard sideways, then front to back. If anything moves, tighten. Then re-check after ten minutes of driving, and again at every stop.

The three mistakes that actually cause failures

1. No bow and stern lines. This is the big one. The two hull straps stop the boat lifting off the roof. They do very little to stop it rotating, and rotation is what a crosswind or the pressure wave off an overtaking truck produces. The end lines are what keep the boat pointing forwards.

2. Ratchet straps. A ratchet will dent a polyethylene hull, and on foam blocks it will also crush the foam so the load goes slack ten miles later. Use cam straps. Detail on the best kayak tie-down straps.

3. Hooking the straps on the door frame lip. Straps sold with small hooks that grab the seam under a door look convenient. They bend the seam over time and they can release. Either run the strap right through the cabin, or use a proper car clip — Rightline includes four in its kit for exactly this reason.

Two things that will annoy you, and the fixes

The doors are strapped shut. Unavoidable on a bare roof. Load the car before the boat, every time, and keep the keys in your pocket rather than the cabin.

Strap hum. A flat strap in an airstream vibrates and it is loud. Put one half-twist in each span. It breaks up the airflow and mostly eliminates the noise — a real fix, not folklore.

What not to do

• Pool noodles. They crush under a hull and offer no meaningful support. This appears constantly in DIY advice and it is not equivalent to closed-cell EVA blocks.
• Towels or blankets as padding. They slide when wet, which is precisely when you need them not to.
• Bungee cords. They are elastic. Anything holding a 60-pound object at 70 mph must not be.
• Skipping the ten-minute check. Foam compresses as it warms and straps bed in. The single check that catches almost every loose load is the one after the first ten minutes.

When to stop doing this and buy bars

Foam blocks are a real solution, not a temporary one — plenty of people use them for years. But there is a point where bars pay for themselves:

If you are driving more than about an hour each way most weekends, the stopping to re-check gets old. If you carry two boats, blocks cannot do it. If you also want to carry a bike or a box, you need bars anyway. And if you cannot bear the doors being strapped shut, that alone is a fair reason.

Short of that, put the money into a cart, which removes the carry from the car park to the water — usually a bigger improvement to a paddling day than the rack is.