Can a TI be transported on a 5' roof rack?

Hello,

I have a 2017 TI on order and after putting many hours reading and researching I got all the components, and just as I am about to install it all, I called Hobie and was instructed against my plan. I was hoping I can top the TI on a 2" black ABS tubs spaced 11" apart and on a 5 Feet very sturdy rack. Hobie said sure, but you will have to transport it upside down. The whole plan is for me to push the boat on rollers to my truck's roof with out flipping it up side down. Hobie said I can keep it upside only if I use the Hobie cradle.

I hope to have years of fun from the TI. I definitely don't want to deform the haul. My questions are still standing in spite of Hobie telling me Cradle yes, Tubing no;

Can the boat be transported on a very rigid roof platform where it will contact the boat underside via 5 Feet of 2" diameter tubing with no support to the rear and front section other than tying it down with a cord?

Can I take long trips with the boat on the roof or should I be concerned 5' is not enough support for a 18.5 long boat?

Please advise. Any input would be welcome.
Thanks in advance,
Eddie

Of course Hobie would tell you to only carry the boat on their cradles. They want you to shell out $300 for some abs plastic that'll crack or break after 1 or 2 seasons (Happened to me). If you're going to go down the route of using PVC and you're car topping, then you probably want to stiffen it up with some wooden inserts. If you can figure out a way to support the bow and stern with a roller then you'd be golden.

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2015 Hobie Tandem Island Hibiscus
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Eddie:
I don't want to oppose Hobie, but most of us out there are not transporting or storing our boats upside down, Actually I know of nobody doing that at all.
I have owned 3 TI's now over the last 6 yrs, and never once have I stored any of my boats upside down. Actually we have traveled the whole country with our TI's on the roof of our SUV, well over 200k miles with our camper in tow.
The last couple years we travel a bit less and spend most of our time divided between our homes in Sarasota, and Key West (FL), sometimes we haul our TI on the roof, and sometimes on our trailer the reason for this is parking in KW is very expensive and difficult to find (there are only 3 trailers spaces in the entire city at the Simonton st launch, and they cost $2.50/hr just for the trailer parking space, you have to park your car in another space (another $2.50 hr)). Needless to say our TI sits on our roof for weeks at a time down there.
I never bought into Hobies cradle thing, and have never owned a set, I simply can't afford them. My choice was spend $500 for the cradles ( I don't even know how much they really cost (embarrassing)), or $10 bucks for some PVC tubing, and make my own. Of course I'm not tellin ya what to do, or not to do, it's your boat not mine.
On the forum here you will find a hundred different trailer threads, and car topping threads, just use the search function of this forum, and check it all out yourself (this forum is really good, with a lot of really smart and friendly people all over the world just sharing their experience, obviously we all love the TI.

Be careful what you ask for, now this is out there you are going to get 500 pics of guys and their boat on the roof or on their trailer (us Hobie people all kind of like to do that).
Heres some of mine.

Locally I just store my TI in our garage on the trailer (takes me two minutes to hook up and go). Notice the boat is right side up on PVC cradles.


This is us with TI on roof (right side up, PVC again, 5 ft roof rack)


This is us on our way to Key West for a month:


This is us on a recent road trip (couple thousand miles):


This is our TI on top of our truck, on top of the Thule Aero bars (5 ft spread). Notice the 1.5" dia x 8 ft long closet poles just shoved under the boat (the closet poles are like $5 bucks each at Home depot), that's all I needed, notice the boat is not upside down. NOTE: You will need 8 foot or longer closet poles (PVC tubing with broom handles stuffed in can also work), but the closet poles are the most handy thing, If you get the bare ones (not pvc coated, just coat them with fence and deck sealer. We don't mount them to anything, we just slide the boat up there and slip them in. When not car topping we just put them in the corner of the garage.


The outside diameter of the poles is pretty important, 1.5" dia OD seems to work best. Too big, and the center of the hull will collapse when you strap the boat down, too small and they fall out.

If we have ours sitting strapped to the roof for sometimes weeks at a time in the hot Key West sun, I sometimes stuff pool noodle under the hull to help even out the load on the hull (pool noodles cost a buck at Walmart)

Hope this help, now wait for the 500 more pics from other proud Hobie owners ( lol)

Funny I just realized looking at the pics, you are looking at 3 different TI's, apparently we like yellow.....

FE

Just dont strap it down too hard or you will flatten the bottom and cause high spots on the bottom where it is vertically braced internally eg drive wells, transducer scupper and mast post.

Carpet or similar on tubes will reduce scratching due to sand etc.

I'm in a similar boat (pun). I'll be adding a hitch and T bar to my wagon to spread the touch points further than the 48 or so inches I can get.

Well thank you all for your help.

I guess I still need to think this through. I really wanted to avoid the T bar (another large object in my garage...). I was hoping to find a simple, one man operation, car topping. Matter affect, my dealer warned me I don't realize how big, heavy and bulky the TI is and I am in for an experience. I told him in return, when I will come to pick up the boat, I want him to help by standing outside with his arms folded across his chest, and a smile on his face while I'm loading the TI alone, quickly and effortlessly. My comments were followed by a big lough on his part. You see, the game is on, and I am betting on myself. I was just hoping to come up with a permanent solution that doesn't require additional modification after I'll get the boat. Well, if I will feel a T bar is a must, I'll get one.

Can anyone advise on how to post pictures/videos here? URL? Img? I tried it before and gave up. How do you do it? I would like to post pictures of my solution if it'll be worth posting...

I'm just a little guy 5' 6.5" tall and way overweight. If I had to guess I've loaded my TI onto the roof all by myself around 500 times now (I lost track a long time ago). There definately is a trick to it. Those T bar hitch reciever really do work well, and if you get one that tilts down it makes the job even easier (well I've heard any because I don't own one of those). I've got a cheaper version that doesn't tilt, but it was only $79 bucks on Amazon.
Also with the Tbar having a weight capacity of 500 lbs makes thing a little safer. Our problem though we couldn't use that Tbar when we had the camper in tow. So it sat in the garage most of the time.
Godd luck
FE

A T bar will probably be useful and might be needed for extra support.

In order to post pictures/videos on the forum they have to be hosted on a site like Picasa, Imgur, etc. (for pictures) and YouTube or the like for videos. You then include the url to the picture or video wrapped in the appropriate tag '[img]' or '[youtube2]'

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• Trampolines
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• Davis Spar Fly
• Kayakbob's Sprayskirts
• Spine Board Hakas

I am not sure about 5 feet of support. I would guess Hobie knows best. My experience is --- My Truck setup is 7 feet of black abs pipe on 4 Yakima racks. Only the front and back of the pipes are secured. the inside of the pipes free float on the two middle racks. To get the pipes perfectly in the kayak strakes, the front pipes are closer together than the back pipes.. This setup works fantastic with no sag in heavy sun. I would trust my TI for weeks on my roof in the hot sun with no sag. I think 7 feet is the sweet spot, because if you notice in my pics below, the hull starts to taper on both sides after 7 feet. I think you want pipes under the majority of the flat part of the hull.





Tight fit and pipe rack

I wish I had taken pictures of the dents that Hobie's cradles left in my hull after just one season. Luckily those fixed themselves after switching to PVC. I don't hold Hobie’s comments against them, but sometimes they are self serving.

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_________________
2015 Hobie Tandem Island Hibiscus
"Third Normal Form"

• Trampolines
• Hobie cover
• Davis Spar Fly
• Kayakbob's Sprayskirts
• Spine Board Hakas

Hi thanks for all the advice. I wish I could have found a picture of the 2015+ TI underside with some measuring tape. I already have a black ABS 2" pipes. My roof racks are about 4.5' and I was planning to extend it to 5'. No with all the info, I am thinking if I could extend to 6 or 7' or just get the T bar. As of now I am experiencing crazy loud wind noise past 70MPH. So this is another issue to contemplate with. I am planning to install a square shape aluminum rod inside the 2" plastic piping for rigidity. But if the pipes need to be conformed to the boat belly and not in a perfectly straight line, I will have to compensate before drilling the aluminum rods.

If a picture of the boat belly can be posted, it would be greatly appreciated. The following pictures are my plan in essence. I am planning to get a stern wheel to strap on the front end and to push the boat up the rollers into it's resting place. Link for the wheels:
https://www.rei.com/product/738003/quan ... heels-cart

First of all. That hood ladder/ramp is bad a$$.

Thoughts in ascending order of coolness.

As far as extending 5 to 7... If 7' of PVC is ideal you can still mount that on 5' racks. I would suspect 1' of PVC overhang to still lend some support.

None the less, if you want a T bar and have a truck you may want to consider a front receiver hitch and a T Bar on that. You'd be using the T bar to load instead of the sweet ramp but would have more length of boat over the truck with options to support it.

If you're doing custom fab consider that load ramp on a hinge at the top. Push the yak up the ramp to the flat rack for a moment. Pull a pin on the bottom of the ramp and have another ladder section raise the front part of the ramp to the roof rack height. Slide the yak forward and now you've got a full car length of support.

If you look at the pick of my TI sitting on my Thule Aerobars on my brown truck you can see the 1.5" dia wood poles 8ft long. Notice the gap between the bottom of the hull in the center and the Aerobars. That is about the right gap, any more and the center of the hull may cave in if left in the sun too long (this actually happened to us, when I had too large a diameter pvc pipes). If you use the correct dia pvc or wood you can crank the boat down with the ratchet straps as tight as needed to prevent the boat from moving without fear of deforming the boat.
The reason I'm suggesting wood is not because I work for Weyerhaeuser (lol), but because wood has incredible strength and even better it's really inexpensive, ie...1.5" dia x 8 ft long closet poles are only like $5 to $10 bucks each. At home depot they also have closet poles that are already pvc coated (a little more expensive though).

If you already have 2" dia pvc and plan to use that, you can make it work, You can just slide 1.5" dia x 8 ft long closet poles into your pvc pipes, and it will now take the side load even if the wood is a little loose inside the pvc pipe (just trap the wood inside the pvc on the ends with screws or something so it doesn't fall out).
When not transporting the boat there is nothing on our roof besides the standard cross bars that came with our Yukon, and on our truck, only the Thule aerobars. In other words we use no fancy roof rack system (ie.. Malone wings, yakima pads, etc), we found all of those just end up denting the heck out of the Hobie kayaks (we have owned a bunch of Hobies, all different models). Seriously we have spent a bunch of money on fancy roof rack systems (many brands and models). We found nothing better than what we are using currently. What we do is just load the hull onto the standard roof rack cross bars, slide the loose 1.5" dia poles under the boat, then just strap the boat down with ratchet straps. The poles self align in the grooves and can't come out.
When we take the boat down, we just stack the poles in the garage, ready for next time (we don't attach the poles to anything)
We used to have Malone wings with the combo slider (a v-groove arm that extended past the back of the suv to load the bow onto, those suckers cost me like $600 bucks and they dented the heck out of all of our Hobies, plus they look like crap sitting on top of the suv when not hauling boats, and create a lot of wind noise.
By far the best setup we found was that $79 dollar T-bar hitch reciever on Amazon for our SUV (don't need it on the truck, the thule aerobars do the same thing on the truck).
What I do is put the T-bar into the hitch reciever. I then center the back of the boat behind the vehicle with the scupper cart locked in the rear scupper holes. I then lay an old door mat under the back of the boat that I stole from a neighbors house (late at night, it says welcome right on it, so I welcomed myself to it (lol)). I then put the bow of the empty hull along side the vehicle with the bow about even with the rear wheels of the car (the boat is at about a 30 deg angle to the car).
I then lift the bow up and place it on my head, and walk hand over hand toward the back of the boat until the bow is high enough to clear the T-bar, then I place the bow onto the T-bar then slide the bow to the middle of the car so now the kayak is straight behind the car, tilted with the stern sitting on my stolen rug (just kidding about the stolen rug btw, I stole it from our porch).
It sounds brutal lifting the boat up, but actually it's really not hard, your only lifting half the weight (around 50 lbs) at a time. Actually because the TI is very long with lots of hand holds, it's way easier to load on the roof than our old Oasis was ( the TI bare hull is only slightly heavier than our old Oasis, if I had to guess maybe 10 to 15 lbs). I actually got hurt a few times loading the old Oasis (strained muscles).
For safety I just put a couple C clamps on the T-bar to prevent the boat from sliding off one end or the other of the T-bar, after the boat is up I remove them.
Now I walk to the back of the boat lift it up, grab a hold of the hd scupper cart (which is already locked in the rear scupper holes), I then just shove the boat forward, it slides easily across the top of the t-bar and over the cars built in cross bars. Once close to wher I want it I slip the handy 8 ft closet poles under the boat following the grooves on 11 inch centers on the under side of the boat. The closet poles support the hull nice and evenly, removing the point loads that the cross bars would normally create. The boat is fully supported by the poles.
Now I place my masts on both sides of the boat, with the main on one side ( in the black bag ( with the opening in the bag pointing back ( not forward), then the other two masts tuck against the other side of the boat. I then put the AMA's on including the aka bars ( handy place to store the aka bars). I then strap the whole works down tight with cheap home depot 1 inch ratchet straps (like $15 bucks for 4 of them). The boat doesn't move. I then tie the bow with V- ropes to prevent the bow from sliding back and forth in side winds on the highway.
When not hauling the boat, there is nothing on the roof. I wish I could get back the couple thousand dollars I've spent on all the fancy roof rack systems I've owned. Turns out the best of all is nothing at all, just the cheapo t-bar, and a couple cheap closet poles. Plus maybe a couple $1 dollar pool noodles that we stuff under the boat if the boat is goung to sit on the roof of the car for a month or so in the hot key west sun, I just shove them under the boat (just in case).
That's what I got, and have loaded and unloaded so many times I've lost track (sometimes daily when we are in key west).
Haven't lost a boat yet in 10 yrs.
FE

Hi fusioneng, thank you for all the pointers. Really appreciated!

I got 2" black ABS tubes (slightly softer than PVC) and I am planning to bolt it down to my "Fancy" roof rack (that did cost lots of $$$ and making a hurricane lever wind noise on the hwy) with squared shape aluminum inserts to make sure no caving take place. My rack is a little over 4'. I checked yesterday, and the most I can extend the tubing on top is up to 6' if I will not use the T bar. I am planning for the rack to be a fixed addition to my truck. The truck is not my primary vehicle, but nevertheless, I have a lot more work to do on it from silencing the wind, to attaching all the component in place in a minimalist way. The hood rollers are meant to be attached and reattached in a simple and fast way. It is quite heavy and with little surface contact area (wheels) to be jacked up as part of the carrier, so this is only going to be a means to an end dimes, after the boat is loaded, I will remove and load in the back somehow.

After all is done, I am planning to put as much info/pix here for the next guy who wants to be ready for a TI car topping. I hope I will keep it simple...

Now I really want to avoid that T bar. Do you think I can get away with 6' of 2" tubes spaced 11" apart where the tubing are going to seat in their final destination conforming exactly to the bottom of the boat? I am planning to do the final adjustment at the dealer if for some reason I will find the tubing need to be moved.

Also, another important question that can save me more work; what in your opinion should be the spacing of the hood rollers from the center to have the most surface contact / fit to the boat under side? At this point I guess closer than 11". Do I need to get them in a slight angle (since the haul is not flat) or do I over think this part of the loading? I just don't want to do the work twice...

Thanks again!

It doesn't hurt a thing to have the ends of the tubes hang into open air past the rack, especially if you have the closet poles slid into the tubing (the wood is actually superior to the aluminum here because the alum bends and stays bent under side load, the wood doesn't ( the wood bends then returns to straight when you remove the load ( aluminum doesn't).
If it was me I would just put the boat up on there with the tubes in place, letting them find the best location themselves (no measuring needed), the once the whole works is in place, mark where the tubes are and drop one or two loose screws in near the ends to keep the tubes from moving around too much ( thats what most of us do)
On the newer boats you have that scupper drain thingy sticking down), what most guys do is just crush the pvc tubing in the area around the scupper drain with a heat gun or torch. Don't worry about sliding the boat on that scupper drain thing, hobie says it's plenty strong and designed to be dragged over.
I wouldn't worry about trying to cover the pvc with carpet or anything, just drag the boat right on the pvc (or abs), your not gonna hurt the boat, actually putting carpet on makes it way harder to slide the boat.
My wood poles stick out past the front of my front aerobar about 3 1/2 ft, doesn't hurt a thing, and helps support the boat over the cab, where I have no support beyond a couple cheap pool noodles stuffed in there ( keeps the boat from tider tawing when I go over railroad tracks.
Hope this helps
FE