Roof Rack Cradles

Guillemot Cradles

Until recently, I used Thule saddles to cartop my boats.  Although the Thule saddles were great, and held the boats very securely, they held the kayaks on their hulls and so there was room only for two boats on the roof.  I started looking around for other carrier options, and I found a website advertising a J-shaped cradle that would hold the boat on its side.  I decided to try to make a set out of materials I had on-hand.  For my first attempt, I designed a cradle that approximated the dimensions in photo of the J-cradle.  This gave me the opportunity to improve on a couple of the things I didn't like about the Thule saddles.  This turned out to be a quick project with very rewarding results.  Here's how I built the Guillemot cradles.

Panache Cradles

Although the first cradle design fit the Guillemot pretty well, it did not fit the Panache at all.  The cross-section of the Panache did not fit the square-bottomed cradle, so I needed a different kind of cradle.  I've built a set of custom cradles for the Panache using the shape of one of the boat forms as a starting point.  Because this yielded a J-shape with a more rounded bottom, the custom cradles had to be built a bit differently than the first set.  Here's how I built the Panache cradles.

Road Testing

Over the past few months I've been able to give the cradles a pretty good workout.  I made the trip from Cleveland, Ohio to the Newfound Woodworks Rendezvous in New Hampshire (24 hr roundtrip road time, 1400 miles), using both sets of cradles, and the boats made the trip without incident.  Some severe crosswinds along the way rocked the car quite a bit, but the boats (and cradles) never moved.   I've had trouble with the Thule saddles shifting with far less wind.  I couldn't be more pleased with how these cradles have worked out.