In a message dated Mon, 7 Aug 2000 11:47:52 AM Eastern Daylight Time, snark_at_tulgey.org aka Glen Acord writes: > PS - this is similar of course to the problem of reefing hard on the bow and stern lines if you tie down the ends of your kayak. > [snip: ... nautical ignorance ...] > Is having taut bow and stern tie down lines a problem? What have people experienced or heard about this? 1 - You are applying forces to the boat, for which it was most likely not designed. Add to that: 2 - The tie-downs will provide only a small component of force in the direction opposing the movement, which you are trying to restrain (depending on the angle at which you tie them, of course). Therefore the tension in the line needs to be much greater than the actual force required to prevent movement; i.e. you have unnecessarily large forces acting on the boat. 3 - It is very hard to prevent lateral movement with steep tie-downs to the bumpers. 4 - In inherently flexible skin-on-frame boats, the forces applied by bumper tie-downs can lead to permanent hogging. In the case of rigid hulls, especially in conjunction with vibration, you could be weakening or actually destroying the integrity of the hull material. PE boats tend to buckle more or less permanently unless the pressure points of the roof rack coincide with bulkheads. My opinion: Bumper tie downs are at best a back-up system if you are worried that your primary roof rack attachment system might fail. Ralph C. Hoehn Ralph_at_PouchBoats.com http://www.PouchBoats.com *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced/forwarded outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Mon Aug 07 2000 - 10:52:00 PDT
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:30:29 PDT