Cartopping

[kasm10@gmail.com]

Any tips? best practices. Searched the forum. nothing. Seemed to remember more info on the old website. is that still around somewhere?

[Cascadian]

Most roof racks aren't made to support that kind of weight, unless you have a custom safari rack for heavy loads and a vehicle that can support it I wouldn't recommend it. If you do manage to do it, make sure you post some pictures, I'd be curious to see how it turns out. Good Luck!

[rsuhay]

OK, I am not recommending it, but here is how I moved a 470 from New Jersey to Virginia without a trailer.

I have a 1990 Plymouth Voyager. I used 4 by 4 PVC fence posts as roof racks with a lot of foam padding from computer boxes as cushions under the contact points. I lashed the boat to the car through the windows and ducke taped the mast to a supporting rod of wood and tied both ends to keep it from bouncing and kinking.

My reasoning was this: At the end of the day, the boat weighs around 350, about as much as one-and-one-half americans. I would not hesitate, other than for the obvious reasons, to drive the van with the weight of two people strapped to the roof, so, other than the increase windage from the boat, what's the diff?

Anyway, we drove through a torrential rainstorm for about 7 hours and made it in one piece and the car handled fine.

Course, that was a one-time plot line. Wouldn't do it again if I could avoid it if for no other reason than the boat was a bear to hoist up there.

I didn't think to record it for posterity.

Hope this is useful. Robert

[Paul]

I have car topped many times, using Thule roof racks. I took most everything out of the boat, ie, booom, sheets, spinnaker pole, etc. in order to reduce weight. Plus I tied the bow to the front bumper and the transom to the back bumper to prevent the boat from twisting. I had an S-10 pickup with a cap over the bed and the truck did just fine, unless I had a big head wind, then it was slow going.

[Scott Fox]

We've driven boats thousands of miles on the roof of our Suburban using standard Thule Racks. Mostly done upright on Euro Style Dollys (i.e. a lot stronger then Seitech etc). Just make sure front of dolly is tied to front bumper and back of dolly is tied to trailer hitch or back bumper.
http://ultraxs.com/image-E83C_4B36A104.jpg (http://ultraxs.com/share-E83C_4B36A104.html)

[Henry]

I too have done a lot of car-topping. The Thule racks work just fine, and a few other brands as well. I don't know what the manufacturer reccomends (probably not car topping a 470) but every rack I have used did aok. More than one- ok, many times- I simply put 2x4 boards across the factory racks on my Suburban and went that route. Cheap, expendable, and available everywhere. I would put the factory racks at max forward and max aft, then lash the 2x4's to the mounting track on either side using 4-6 feet of bungee with many wraps on both sides. Tighter than a tick. A couple of hand towels underneath where the boat sits e-taped into place and off you go.

Not the classiest solution but a big fan of simple stuff that works. Make sure you tie off all your control lines in the boat or it will click and clack and chip paint and gelcoat all the way home...