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Hi all,
Planning a long-distance trip, I want to bring a roof-top box (yakima skybox) and a 10'6" SUP, looking for solutions to carry them both on the roof as the box takes up most of the rack space.....any suggestions? Strap the board to the top of the box? mount the board on edge somehow? Surely this problem has been tackled before?? Thanks in advance!
Is it a hard board or an inflatable ?
Haven't tried it but (assuming a hard board) I would think mounting vertically with a kayak stacker would work. If they can hold a 14 foot sea kayak weighing 50 pounds they should be able to hold a shorter SUP weighing half that amount. I'd pad the crossbars with a towel or some closed cell foam though to keep from banging up the rails.
Option 2 would be to get longer crossbars and run the board flat. I think the Skybox is around 36" wide and the SUP will be 32-34" so you're looking at needing around 6-7 foot crossbars. Generally as long as the bars are less than your car width (including side mirrors) you should be OK, though watch your head getting in and out of the car unless you have a tall SUV or van. (Some people put old tennis balls on the ends of the bars to pad them.)
Put pool noodles on the box. Strap the board on top nose first and upside down.
The straps go under the cross bars btw
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^^^^I would not do that with one of my boards, but it could work. The problem I see is the tension you would need to have on the straps to keep that board from shifting, and that tension crusihing into bottom/rails for long term pressure ding/delam damage.
The better option, if you can get it, is the wide bars. I've seen this done successfully many times without beating the shit out of your board trying to strap it to a fucking box.
But go ahead and listen to coreshot. He is a kook after all.
Hard board, actually a home-built. Came out pretty well for a first try, though I had built 2 woodstrip kayaks, so some experience with glass etc.
Wider bars is probably the "best" answer. I had thought about the J-rack, I was a little concerned about the sail area of the board, but you are right, if a kayak can do it, why not zoidberg? I have also considered stacking on top of the box, but I think the strap pressure needed would deform the box. It would also create some interesting aerodynamics where the board and box meet, an air trap or something. Obviously some experimentation is warranted here......
Thanks for the replies, sorry for sinning up the surf forum with such a fecking boring topic....
Point taken on dinging rails with pressure if it’s a light weight polyester layup. SUP is usually epoxy.
I’ve strapped sups and Wsurf’s on top of boxes for years with no damage. And no funky aerodynamics.
I’ve stacked three boards on a rack with foam spacers with no damage.
Sup’s have very solid rails since they get whacked by paddles quite often.
Wide , wider , widest, I've had the widest available thule or Yakima bars for > 20 yars, they stuck out about 14" on each side of a VW TDi , no cop has ever said a word even when he ran into the end while giving me a speeding ticket,
Just so I don't put someones eye out I cut a small hole in a fluorescent hockey ball and jam it on the end of the bar, also makes it really easy to find the car in a p-lot
the biggest load I ever did was 5 WW kayaks/5 kayakers/ all their gear/ a thule box in reasonable comfort on an 8hr round trip to paddle, the milage went from > 60 mpg to 30 something mpg
Epoxy on this one, and rails are plenty burly...lolz. Thanks for the feedback!
You can always put pipe insulation around the straps. Should be fine.
Hi there! How did it go using epoxy?