Saddling Up

by Jonathan Hanson

When we all ascend to the Valhalla of sea kayakers, we will find ourselves in a land of endless fjords, with seafront homes on protected coves scattered about for the choosing. There will be no cars (well, perhaps a few Porsche Carerras, for those who so wish), and no need ever to expose our boats to the brutalities of a road system.

I have a few lucky friends who live this way right here in their mortal lives, except for the Porsches. But for the rest of us, particularly those, like me, who reside in states where "tide" refers only to laundry detergent, launching a sea kayak invariably involves an intermediary trip in a car or truck. Road time is the most dangerous time in the life of a kayak. I personally know of more boats damaged or destroyed while being transported than were harmed by surf landings or collisions with various forms of marine substrate.

Despite such statistics, I’m sometimes astonished at those who will blithely drop the better part of three grand on a Kevlar kayak, then quibble over less than ten percent of that to transport it safely. Your kayak deserves the best rack and saddles you can afford. If you really blew your entire budget on the boat and those 20-ounce paddles, it’s possible, with a bit of work, to make your own racks and saddles—but that’s another story. For now, we’re concerned with the latest developments in commercial saddle systems.

For several years, while leading sea kayak trips to remote areas in Mexico, I regularly carried six to eight boats at a time for hundreds of miles on interstates, rough pavement, dirt roads and tortuous four-wheel-drive tracks. I learned a lot about what it takes to transport a kayak not only safely, but with little danger of even cosmetic damage.

First, you don’t need a lot of padding. It’s tempting to try to provide the cushiest ride possible for your boat, but overly soft foam creates more problems than it solves, because it will continue to compress after you snug everything down and hit the road. The result is loose straps and chafing as the boat moves around. A boat that is locked down on a well-fitting cradle needs only a bare minimum of padding to absorb vibrations and shock.

Second, plastic is great stuff. I was highly suspicious of the first composite rack systems; aluminum and oak were my preferred materials. But countless horrifying incidents involving boats secured on commercial racks and encounters with gale-force crosswinds, Land Cruiser-sized potholes and world-class washboard roads have convinced me of the astounding safety factor built into fiber-reinforced nylon and similar materials. Durability doesn’t seem to suffer either—some of my first plastic saddles have years and years of use on them, with little sign of fatigue. The one thing I’m still cautious of is UV exposure. As far as I know, the plastic hasn’t yet been developed that is immune to degradation from sunlight. So eschew the poseur thing and take off your racks between trips. Other than that, I’ve pretty much stopped sighing when a maker substitutes plastic for a previously metal part, and look forward to seeing what can be done in the future. Here’s a sampling of what’s being done right now.