transporting mirage oasis - securing to roof rack

I have a hobie mirage oasis and I am using yakima Sweetroll paddles on my 2015 Lexis RX 350 at the dealers recommendation. (I know, at 93 lbs the oasis exceeds the weight specs for the sweetroll by about 10%). Following the tiedown recommendations for the sweetroll, but I don't really get how tying down the front and rear of the boat to the eyehooks below the front and rear bumpers actually does much to keep the boat from slipping forward or aft on the sweetroll paddles. I thought that instead, it might be useful to use straps or rope to slip through the fore and aft handgrip slots on the kayak top rails, and secure the rope through the fore seat handles to the back rack rail, and the rope through the aft seat handles to the front rack rail, forming an 'X' on either side of the kayak, to keep the boat from sliding forward or back on the paddles of the Sweetroll. Would this make sense and would it eliminate the need to tie down the ends of the kayak to the front and back of the car? The latter would really only make sense if the kayak was significantly shorter than the car itself (it isn't). Any thoughts from the 'experts'?

mylesfromnowhere:

We have been Hobie kayakers for many years and have if I had to guess 250,000 road miles with kayaks on the roofs of our vehicles with a camper in tow, all around the country. But we had much larger Yukon Denali's.
We owned an Oasis for quite a while, plus several Revo's, and now car top our TI (a tad bigger than the oasis).

I looked at the RX 350 and if you have the model with the incorporated cross bars, you might be ok but the cross bars are a little close together to be comfortable with a big boat like the Oasis. Not a deal breaker but you likely need to take extra precautions.
We had a set of the same Yakima pads (but not the model with the rollers (those rollers are cool)), I just remember it being a super pia to get the bigger kayaks up on the roof, I ended up getting rid of the Yakima pads (might have thought differently if I had those handy rollers though).
If I had that vehicle and that boat, I would continue using the Yakima Sweetroll's but I would add a little bit more for safety (you are exceeding their rating). Don't worry though what I'm suggesting is super cheap and easy to do, and increases your safety margin significantly, plus it saves denting your hull in the sun (a problem I had with my Yakima pads).
Just go to home Depot and buy two 1.5 inch dia x 8ft long closet poles, they are plenty strong and last forever (maybe $10-$15 bucks for both), most Home Depots also have the same closet poles with a vinyl skin on them but they are a little more expensive, but they last way longer, and the vinyl coated ones you don't have to seal with wood fence sealer.
While in home depot pick up a 4 pack of $15 dollar HDX ratchet straps ( https://www.google.com/shopping/product ... ns+(4-Pack),+Plastic+Board+Is+Black/Webbing+Is+Camouflage+With+Black+Hook&hl=en&ei=yLSaV-27OYTPeI30lvAG&mid=shFwgTTzb%7Cdc_mtid_8903tb925190_pcrid_111422834345_pkw__pmt__product_202340309_slid_&lsft=gclid:CNHt0JXGl84CFVFahgodvzsFCw)

Those are way better and stronger than the Yakima straps, you can really clamp the boat down with the ratchets.

You won't be loading the boat any differently than you do currently, just when your done getting the boat up there you slide the two closet poles into the two slots on the underside of the hull, in the two grooves going up the underside of the entire boat on 11 inch centers. If it's a newer boat you might have to notch one of the rods a little to avoid the new scupper drains (not a big deal, just hack the material away, the wood will still be strong enough).

Now when you clamp the boat down it will be clamped against the wooden bars sittin on the cross bars vs the yakima pads. Now you just slide the yakima pads up against the side of the hull to prevent side to side movement.

Now you clamp the boat down with those HDX ratchet straps, what I do is wrap the hook around the crossbar and hook it to itself, then run the line over the boat, do the same with the ratchet side, then just feed the strap into the ratchet and pull er down tight. If I'm only using the things for the boat I just cut away the excess strap material (who cares, their really cheap).

When clamped down you should be able to budge the boat at all.

Next it's really important to strap the front and the back of the boat down for two reasons. If your on the highway in side winds, the wind will rip the boat off your roof, roof rack and all. Second, if you have to hit your breaks really hard to stop, the kenetic motion of the boat will cave your roof in, plus the boat will take off down the road ahead of you(roof rack and all) the ropes in the back prevent all that. I've actually seen that happen, well the aftermath anyway.
On our Yukon we have tow hooks on the front and back so it's easier. What works best is if you can have 2 ropes in the front and two ropes in the back tied in an upside down V shape. This prevents all side to side motion.in the wind, and also those ropes prevent the boat from rocking like a rocking horse when you go over railroad track (which also can easily dent your roof).
I use the same kind of poles to transport our TI on our Thule Aerobars, and it's really rock solid, and stands up to the hot Key West sun for weeks at a time on the roof of our vehicle when we are down there without caving the bottom of the boat in, Your Yakima pads over time will cave in your hull in the hot sun (just sayin, been there done that).
You may need to put a strap around the bow to capture the poles near the front of the boat to keep the poles from rattling in the wind (we had to do that).
Hope this helps you.
FE

Edit:
Here is a pic of our TI (only slightly larger than your Oasis) all setup for the thousand mile road trip back to Florida last month. You can see how the ratchet straps are wrapped around and attached to the cross bars. And you can see the Home depot cheapo 8ft vinyl covered closet poles that support the boat. Like I said I used to use the Yakima pads, but ended up getting rid of them, and use nothing at all now (just the poles). On your Oasis just plain PVC tubing would probably work just as well, the whole key is choosing the diameter of tubing, that allows the boat to be clamped into the tubes (different dia PVC tubing with every Hobie model). Of course the larger diameter PVC tubing doesn't need the wood re-enforcement inside. When not hauling the boat, I just stack the tubes in the garage, nothing remains on the car.


Here is pic of the V rope setup on the front, the reason I use ropes vs 1" straps is the straps vibrate like a violin string on the highway unless you twist them (many turns), and get destroyed pretty quickly from the fluttering, plus the fluttering damages your front end chrome. If you don't have eye hooks on the front of the vehicle, not a big deal. on one of our older vehicles we just tied straps to something handy under the hood, then fed the straps out the sides of the hood, and tied them off on the boat.

Fusioneng, Thanks for the suggestions and fotos. There are a couple of issues with using them (the poles) on our car having to do with the height of the paddles and their curve and the need to actually have the boat resting fully on the paddles bottom and side in order to get the friction effect of rubber on hull. I do appreciate the issue of needing the front and rear tie downs, re crosswinds, and I guess I need to address this. I was kind of hoping that using the front handle to rear crossbar, and vice-versa, approach - creating an 'X' on each side of the boat, would address both the creep of the boat on the yakima paddles when suddenly stopping, AND any side-to-side motion caused by cross-winds. When the front and rear tie-downs to the bumpers/chassis rings end up being close to vertical, because the boat is almost as long as the car, I can see how this prevents the boat from shooting off the roof with a sudden stop, but it really doesn't prevent the boat from creeping forward on the Yakima paddles with each stop, unless you really yank down hard on the straps that hold the boat down to the car rack crossbars (risking deformity of the hull by the paddles).

Tie a line through a scupper and to the rack to prevent excessive creep. For sure us the bow and aft lines tied to the eyes... not handles for cross wind protection. The long hull overhanging the rack will have a lot of leverage on the rack if you get hit by cross winds.

_________________
Matt Miller
Former - Director of Parts and Accessory Sales
Warranty and Technical Support
Hobie Cat USA
(Retired 11/7/2022)

Tie a line through a scupper and to the rack to prevent excessive creep. For sure us the bow and aft lines tied to the eyes... not handles and to the bumpers for cross wind protection. The long hull overhanging the rack will have a lot of leverage on the rack if you get hit by cross winds.

_________________
Matt Miller
Former - Director of Parts and Accessory Sales
Warranty and Technical Support
Hobie Cat USA
(Retired 11/7/2022)

Tie a line through a scupper and to the rack to prevent excessive creep. For sure us the bow and aft lines tied to the eyes... not handles and to the bumpers / frame for cross wind protection. The long hull overhanging the rack will have a lot of leverage on the rack if you get hit by cross winds.

_________________
Matt Miller
Former - Director of Parts and Accessory Sales
Warranty and Technical Support
Hobie Cat USA
(Retired 11/7/2022)

Nice ideas. Many new techniques and ideas have been generated for transporting different types of water vessels such as mirage oasis, boat transport or yacht transport. I read the blogs of we will transport it(http://www.wewilltransportit.com/boat-transport/) to know more about the shipping services and ideas.

Be careful when using ratchet straps. If you over-tighten them, you can dent the hull of your kayak. Better to use boat straps such as the NRS straps.

Good luck with those Yakima paddles, I dented several hulls on several Hobies with them, until I gave up on them. Our situation was different though, we would keep kayaks on the roof for sometimes weeks at a time in the Key awest sun and heat (it's 95-100 there thru most of the summer, and really intense sun. You will probably be fine If you don't do like we did.
FE