My wife and I are in the market for SOT kayaks. Hers for paddling around the local lagoons, and mine primarily to fish said lagoons. The one we’ll get for her is about 9’, just the basic recreational. I’m leaning REAL hard to the Pelican Castaway, about 11.5 foot long. I drive a Subaru Impreza…has the rails, but no racks yet.
The local Yakima dealer says that the car MIGHT handle both kayaks, but has no way to tell for certain. Says we’d need to own the boats and try to fit them. Well, I don’t want to buy the boats until I know I have a way to get them from here to there. I’m fairly sure that the local Yakima guy just doesn’t know much.
Does anyone happen to know if I’ll be able to get two kayaks onto my car? Is Yakima the way to go, or is Thule any better? Thoughts?
Hoping to join the paddling crew real soon. As in yesterday. Yeah, I’ve got the jones for kayaks real bad. Can’t ya tell?
How much weight can your car’s roof top handle? Some (most? all?) owners manual should state the maximum weight you can tote around up there. Compare that with the combined weight of the two kayaks.
Next thing to check is whether or not your rack dealer can set you up with bars wider than the roof top. Yakima should have that readily available. You’ll likely need the extra width if you mount both kayaks laying flat.
You might be able to get by with standing your kayaks up on edge using one of the vertical or near-vertical rack mounts. Just make sure to include the weight of that setup when comparing against what your car’s roof is rated for…
-On my small car I have a yakima, and on the van there is a thule.
There is a u shaped bar that goes in the middle of cross bars, the yaks sit on the side, and are strapped in, somewhat like toast in a toaster.
My two old town yaks fit very comfortably with this system, but if I were to put them upside down ( without the u bar ), I would not be able to fit both of them on my van, or smaller car.
Another option is the cradles; they look like the giant letter c, they hold the yaks at 45 degrees. If I had the choice between the u-bar, and the cradles, I would choose the cradles; easier to strap the yaks in, but I did not know that when I was buying.
A small tip not to forget!!!
When transporting, strap in the front,and back, then one strap for the middle.
They make great quick relase straps for yaks, and canoes now, you should really look into them, they are easy to instal, and hold you craft much better then the standard yellow poly rope.
If I were to get standard crossbars for the existing roof rails, they handle almost 150 pounds. The Castaway kayak is about 60 pounds, and the little one is about 32 or so, so the weight is not the problem. It’s just a matter of being sure they’ll fit. I never considered getting crossbars to go past the width of the car. Maybe I should call Yakima directly about this. The “C” style that loads the yaks on edge sounds like a good idea. I’ll keep the stapping ideas in mind that the poster shared.
Well, I got two kayaks and a roof rack system, so all is well. So what did I get?
I decided to go with the Yakima crossbars, LowRider towers and the HullRaiser cradle system. I have the Hullraisers in the center, with the two boats facing outwards. I find it to be a very simple system to work with. No tools to install. I didn’t buy the locks to keep the bars on the car, but I will, as taking them off and putting back on takes a bit of time.
My wife and I bought two used yaks from friends of ours. Not exactly ideal for fishing, but I can modify one enough for this year and save up towards an Ocean Kayak or something like that, rather than the Pelican Castaway.
We took the yaks out on local water this Memorial Day and had a great time. Looking forward to getting out to fish in mine. Right now, trying to learn how to paddle without pulling to port all the time. No rudders on the little yak, so I’ll have to work on my stroke skills.
Yakima customer service via email was great to work with. I tried them by phone, buy not so good. I purchased the system online from RackAttack, one of their sponsors. Good price and GREAT delivery time.
Glad to hear you got something worked out. My comment about the weight limit wasn’t meant to worry about the bars themselves…it was a caution about how much weight the roof of your car can handle. Odds are, you’re OK (given the weights you posted for the yaks plus a guess at the bar weights) but it’s always good to be certain the load up there doesn’t cause vehicle problems…
I use on my legacy outback the rack that the Subaru Dealer sales. I carry two otters Oldtown all the time and never had a problem. I even got the high way (70m/h) and not a single problem. The secret is to tie them to the cross bars and the front and back lines. The kayak rack is foldable, so when not in use no need to take it off, I just fold it. I do use two piece of foam between the kayak, but this is more to protect the kayak than anything else.
You will have no problem. I have used the Yakama with their shortest bars (48") to carry a canoe and two kayaks. THey can hold up to 150 lbs which is way more than two kayaks weigh.
Thules are just as good. The advantage to the yakama is that you are able to buy a piece of plumbing pipe to fit inside their bars to make an extender to load kayaks or canoes easily, and it cost less than $10.00 rather than the $80 that Yakima or Thule want.
I have a Honda Element and I use basic Yakima racks. I bought the bars longer than recommended (72") to carry to wide SOTs or 1 SOT and a canoe. Both fit fine and no problems with the longer bars. Okay, once in a while I bonk my head but it’s rare.
For my Jeep I popted for the 58 inch Thule bars and then use the Thule glide and set racks … holds two kayaks flat and very easy to load and unload.
tom
