A Day Out{side} Loading Your Kayak

4:16

Hey, guys, it’s Kara with Go Out{side}. Today, I’m going to show you how I mount my kayak on this roof mount. Roof racks come in many shapes and sizes, depending on what brand and model you decide to go with. But this is what mine looks like. The first step I always take is to place a towel above my door.
This towel protects my car’s paint job as well as the bottom of my kayak from getting scratched. I make sure to close the door on the towel just to make sure it’s held in place. Next, I run a strap between the two arms of my roof rack. The purpose of this strap is to act as a hinge point for when I lift up my kayak onto my car.

You’ll see a bit more about this strap in just a minute. The last thing I do after I tighten down that strap is to make sure the metal buckle is off to the side so it doesn’t scratch up the bottom of my kayak. Up next, it’s time to get my kayak so I go pick it up out of my garage and bring it outside and lay it parallel to my car so that it looks like this.

From this point, I lift up my kayak so that the front part is resting on the towel and strap from earlier. From this angle, you can see how the towel and strap are helpful in protecting the car and the kayak. At this point, I lift up the rear of my kayak and push it forward until I reach about the halfway point of the kayak. And then I begin turning it so that it runs parallel with my car again. Then I take two additional straps, one for the front half of the kayak and one for the back half and run them through the arms of the roof rack. And over the top of my kayak.

I’ll walk around to the other side of my car and run the straps through the arms of the raft and then throw the straps back to the side we started on. Once I make it back to the other side of my car, I tighten down all of my straps. This is what the final product looks like from above.

All that’s left to do is to remove the towel and tuck away the excess straps so that they don’t flap around in the wind as we drive. And then we’re ready to make our way to the lake. Once I make it to the boat ramp, I essentially do the whole process we just went through but in reverse with the first step being taking off the straps that are holding down the kayak.
Then I replace the towel onto my car door to help protect it from being scratched. And then I pull my kayak backward until I reach about the halfway point of the kayak and then start to turn it perpendicular to my car then I rest the back of the kayak on the ground.

From this point, I just take the side of my kayak and set it on the ground. Now all that’s left is to get all of my equipment out of the trunk of my car and loaded into my kayak. And then I’m ready to hit the water.