It seems that quite a lot of PaddleWisers have experienced problems with boats on top of their cars. Although they describe minor problems, that only required pulling over and fixing something, try for a moment to imagine the worst-case scenario: A kayak that gets blown off your roof on the highway, sails across to the other side and hits the driver off a loaded schoolbus... Well, don't let me spoil your sleep tonight, imagine the rest for yourself. In my business, the oil business, we believe in "redundancy", a principle that I also use when tying a kayak to a car. The principle is: ANY part of the construction must be allowed to fail without everything collapsing. The normal way of tying a kayak to a car in Holland is fixing a trailer onto your roof, then fixing two kayak holders to the trailer, then fixing the kayak to the holders using ropes. In this way, whatever part breaks, your kayak looses one of its two supports, gives a stress on the remaining support that it is not designed for, and in a matter of minutes or seconds your kayak is gone. A bow line and a stern line make the whole construction redundant: Whatever part fails, there is always a part to back it up. If the bowline fails the trailer is the backup, if the trailer fails the bowline is the backup. As we all know, the driving part is the most dangerous part of a day of kayakking. Be safe! Actually, tying boats to a car should be part of every safety course in kayakking. Sometimes I am amazed by the knots and constructions people dare to use. Niels. (who only uses bowlines when he feels like it. I have total confidence in my own knots and technical insight.) *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Wed Apr 18 2001 - 06:00:16 PDT
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