Mountain Buzz banner

do you tie boats on with straps or rope?

do you use rope or straps...

6K views 29 replies 18 participants last post by  rhm 
#1 ·
to tie your girlfriend down?

just kidding, which do you use to tie boats on your car? being from the east, everyone who i was boating with when i was learning tied boats on their cars with rope. therefore i learned to tie boats on with rope. now that i live in colorado, there have been several occasions when i have tossed a rope over the boats on top of my car to someone on the other side. when i walk around the person is standing there with a bewildered look on their face wondering what to do with it. do most boaters in co use straps to tie boats on? or is it just most of the people i have been boating with?
 
#4 ·
the world would be a much better place if there were just enough 6-foot straps to go around....
 
#5 ·
Straps are easy, but rope has more uses, can be used in different ways and is cheaper. Problem is, most people simply dont know knots. they might know a half hitch and if they were a raft guide they might know a trucker's hitch but beyond that you throw a rope to anyone and they say: "what do you want me to do with this?" Knots are some of the greatest inventions that have been passed down to us from sailors and pirates... That and rum.......And the clap probably.
 
#7 ·
Ropes. No buckles to ding your car finish. More versatile. No need to untwist. Cheap. If it's too long, trim it down - something you wouldn't want to do w/straps. Haven't really checked it out, but I think ropes are faster to tie down with.

And if you're carrying boats on top of your ride, AND you're tying your bow and stern, which you really SHOULD do, so if you're in a wreck your boat doesn't become a projectile and do unspeakable things, and some lawyer ends up having his way with you - they don't flutter in the wind as you drive (the straps, not the lawyer).

Learn a few knots - it's worth it.

Action "Old School" Jackson
 
#8 ·
it looks like the replies are half and half right now, but the votes are leaning toward straps. i prefer rope for some of the reasons mentioned. no buckles to break windows, scratch your paint, or dent your car, all of which i've seen happen. you only need a 10 foot rope to do what a 20 foot strap will do. rope stretches a little bit unlike straps and when your boats shift around while you are driving the rope won't totally loosen up like a strap will. i've been boating for about 15 years and have never lost boats off the top of my car that were tied on with rope. even through a little ditch cleaning episode. during that one my rack bent my rain gutter, but the boats all stayed on. however, i have had a couple of my boats hit the pavement when other friends have tied them on their cars with straps.
 
#9 ·
I think it's just a matter of personal preference. I remember when everyone in Colorado still used rope to tie boats down. Everyone should know their knots from their SRT anyways. Straps are convenient and with just a little skill are not at all damaging to the car. I've never hit my car or window with the strap but unlike some of my buddies, I pay attention when I'm strapping boats down :D. I have never lost a boat (had a few lucky ones, though). I use ropes occasionally but prefer strappage. Ropes are more versatile and cheaper but also tend to stretch more and take longer to tie down when taking out in the snow :D.

For the record, I have trimmed straps down when they were too long (ones that I always use for the same purpose and knew I wouldn't miss the extra length).

I say, be good at doing both and choose what you want to do based on personal preference and what's available at the time.

COUNT

"The owner of the car must always tie the boats on. He knows how he wants it done."-Corran Addison
 
#13 ·
if my boats are getting tied on top of someone else's car, i like to at least have some input if i'm right there. how someone else wants it done isn't always good enough. the two times that i spoke of earlier that my boats fell off someone else's car, i was not there to load my boat. both times i drove up on my friends picking up boats off the road. when your boat hits the pavement at 50mph it does a lot of damage. keep that in mind when you are hauling your friends boats around, and always use a bow and stern line.
 
#14 ·
We (some members of our group, I actually had nothing to do with the boats, driving, or tying) lost a 2Fun off the roof doing 75 on I-25 driving home from the Poudre. The nose slipped out from from the front strap, the wind caught the boat and flipped up (vertical) off the car and landed in the middle of the highway. It got tagged by two cars before a semi hit the stern and it flew up in the air. Amazingly, the other three boats stayed on the roof and the only damage to the boat was the set of tire marks on the stern!

COUNT
 
#18 ·
Thin straps (1/2") & knots. Properly done knots never fail. Cams, on the other hand, do break occassionally.

If I'm driving, I tie 'em on my vehicle, then usually get the owner to inspect & approve, so it's their responsibility if they don't like my tying method. If someone else is driving, I usually ty my own, with the exception of a few well-trusted friends.
 
#20 ·
Jeez, what straps are you guys using? I have an NRS strap holding two large aspens together in my yard for 2 years. No stretching, breaking. They are 40 ft aspens and yes its a little ghetto but it keeps em from rubbing on my deck.
 
#21 ·
and always use a bow and stern line.

Always? I think if I saw bow/stern lines on a six foot playboat I would piss myself.

If you use your car like you should use your car there's no reason to worry about dinging the paint job with a buckle. Between falling skis, boards, boats and bikes, I can barely tell what color my roof is supposed to be. And we live in Colorado..doesn't every windshield have spiders in it anyway?

Straps. Unless you're trying to tie three boats on horizontally across the rollbars of a jeep. Then they don't work too well. Straps are also the best way to keep a dildo in place...thus the term "strap-on".
 
#24 ·
boring

while this thread has gone on way too long, and is quite boring, i find a need to add my 2 boring cents:

so...yeah, i use straps, and i'd say it is pretty clear that most use straps, but a lot of old dogs use rope (i'm guessing cause cam straps weren't really sold at kayak shops back in the 70s...) - which leads me to a semi-funny story -

went boating this year with my crew. mostly 30 somethings doing 4's and trying to step into 5's - we ran a local 4 run around here for the first time this year, and in doing so, we met up with an old dog to shuttle. Now...this dude was what i call a "master" - mainly, a super competent boater that runs V's. - he knew the run well (was prepared to solo it), and had obviously been boating while i was still pulling bra straps and trying to figure out if a "boner" was actaully a bone. so we did our run and took out, and prepared to shuttle back up to the put in (BTW - 1 swim for my crew in the lower bony section) - and it was pretty obvious to me that the master dude had had enough of us young losers. Towards the end of the run, he pretty much disappeared, and continued on to the takeout without us, which would normally be 100% cool, except that on this run, one can continue downstream, thru hard V and VI territory. So we all finally pulled out, with this dude gone, and start trucking down to where we think his truck is. He eventually drives up, and we start loading stuff up. Being an old dog master, he throws the rope over his truck to my bud, who is staring at it wondering how to rig. At this point, old dude comes over, and ties the shit up, the whole time telling us what a bunch of idiots we are, and how there was "life before cam straps" - obviously, we had no respect from master dude, and he was quite disappointed with us non-master colorado boaters.

so....there's no real point here (that i can make out anyways) - other than it is still funny for me to think of this master dude, and how he was so disappointed with my bro for not tying the shit up to his specifications... - i guess maybe the lessons might be twofold:

1) learn to rig shit with the truckers hitch or otherwise, so that when you end up with an old dog, you might gain some respect. or
2) if you're an old dog, don't get super elitist about non-old dogs not tying things like you like. i mean really, if your boating experience was more recent, you would also not be aware of the ideal rigging mechanisms.

That would be like me making fun of some new climber for not knowing how to use a figure 8, as now people mostly use ATC's or a variety of new devices (point #2 here)...
 
#25 ·
boring

while this thread has gone on way too long, and is quite boring, i find a need to add my 2 boring cents:

so...yeah, i use straps, and i'd say it is pretty clear that most use straps, but a lot of old dogs use rope (i'm guessing cause cam straps weren't really sold at kayak shops back in the 70s...) - which leads me to a semi-funny story -

went boating this year with my crew. mostly 30 somethings doing 4's and trying to step into 5's - we ran a local 4 run around here for the first time this year, and in doing so, we met up with an old dog to shuttle. Now...this dude was what i call a "master" - mainly, a super competent boater that runs V's. - he knew the run well (was prepared to solo it), and had obviously been boating while i was still pulling bra straps and trying to figure out if a "boner" was actaully a bone. so we did our run and took out, and prepared to shuttle back up to the put in (BTW - 1 swim for my crew in the lower bony section) - and it was pretty obvious to me that the master dude had had enough of us young losers. Towards the end of the run, he pretty much disappeared, and continued on to the takeout without us, which would normally be 100% cool, except that on this run, one can continue downstream, thru hard V and VI territory. So we all finally pulled out, with this dude gone, and start trucking down to where we think his truck is. He eventually drives up, and we start loading stuff up. Being an old dog master, he throws the rope over his truck to my bud, who is staring at it wondering how to rig. At this point, old dude comes over, and ties the shit up, the whole time telling us what a bunch of idiots we are, and how there was "life before cam straps" - obviously, we had no respect from master dude, and he was quite disappointed with us non-master colorado boaters.

so....there's no real point here (that i can make out anyways) - other than it is still funny for me to think of this master dude, and how he was so disappointed with my bro for not tying the shit up to his specifications... - i guess maybe the lessons might be twofold:

1) learn to rig shit with the truckers hitch or otherwise, so that when you end up with an old dog, you might gain some respect. or
2) if you're an old dog, don't get super elitist about non-old dogs not tying things like you like. i mean really, if your boating experience was more recent, you would also not be aware of the ideal rigging mechanisms.

That would be like me making fun of some new climber for not knowing how to use a figure 8, as now people mostly use ATC's or a variety of new devices (point #2 here)...
 
#26 ·
i love the look on people's faces at the put-in when they realize that they're boat is sideways or something, and was probably on the verge of falling off during the whole shuttle.

once i saw a guy's boat fall off his truck and he didnt stop. so of course my crew and i picked it up. he couldnt believe it when someone else showed up with his boat on their rig.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top