The Best Bow and Stern Tie-Downs

Bow and stern lines are judged differently from the straps that go over a load, because they are solving a different problem and they fail in a different way.

1. How it tensions, and whether it can over-tension. This is the first criterion and the one people get wrong. A ratchet or a pulley multiplies your force. That is useful on a steel cargo basket and dangerous on a thin polyethylene or composite hull — a bow line cranked tight can pull a deck out of shape or bend a boat around its own bars. Everything here can do the job at hand tension, and we say so on every pick that is capable of more.

2. Whether it has anywhere to attach. A line is only as good as the anchor at each end. Most cars built in the last fifteen years have no accessible metal point front or rear, so a product that includes or complements an anchor loop beats one that assumes you have tow hooks.

3. What it does to the boat and the car. Thin rope concentrates load; flat webbing spreads it. Bare metal hooks mark paint. Anything that flaps at 70 mph will polish a stripe into your hood by the end of the summer.

4. Whether it survives being left outside. These live in a wet car, get packed away damp, and sit in the sun. UV and salt kill cheap webbing and cheap plastic hardware, and a line that looks fine can have lost most of its strength.

What we did not rank on is break strength. Published break strengths in this category are seller specifications, they are enormous relative to the job, and the real failure is never the webbing — it is the knot, the anchor, or the fact that nobody fitted the line at all.

Picture a kayak on two crossbars with two straps over it. Those straps are doing a good job of stopping the boat lifting and a decent job of stopping it sliding. Now picture a semi passing you at 75 mph. The pressure wave hits one end of a 14-foot lever that is pinned in the middle, and the boat wants to swing. The straps resist that only through friction.

A line from the bow to the front of the car and a line from the stern to the rear turns that lever into a triangle. The boat cannot swing because both ends are tied to the vehicle, not just the middle. That is the whole mechanism, and it is why two cheap lines do more for highway safety than upgrading your hull straps ever will.

The second job is the one nobody likes to think about. If a crossbar, a foot or a fit kit lets go — and they do, usually because the fitting was never torqued or re-checked — the hull straps go with it, because they are wrapped around the bar that just left. The bow and stern lines are attached to the car. They are the reason a rack failure is a frightening noise and a scratched hood instead of a boat crossing the centerline. Our pre-trip roof rack safety check covers the fittings that cause it.

Both jobs apply to anything long and light, not just boats. Ladders, lumber, pipe, a canoe, two paddleboards stacked — if it overhangs the bars by a lot, it wants end lines. Shorter and denser loads generally do not; a cargo box bolted to the bars is a different problem, covered in how to tie down cargo.

This is the question that stops most people, and the answer has four parts. Work down the list and stop at the first one your car actually has.

1. A factory tow or recovery point. Some cars have a threaded recovery eye behind a bumper cover, or a visible hook under the front. If yours does, use it. It is engineered for far more load than a bow line will ever apply.

2. Under-hood anchor loops. The standard answer, and the reason both Thule’s loops and the Cajun pair are on this page. A short webbing strap goes under the hood near a hinge or a strut mount, the hood closes on it, and the loop or eyelet hangs out at the front. Same idea at the back under the trunk lid or the hatch.

3. A structural bolt or a subframe point. Possible, but you are now making a judgment about which bolt is structural, and a wrong guess puts a load into bodywork. We would rather you spent ten dollars on loops.

4. What not to use, ever. Plastic bumper covers, grille slats, a license plate bracket, a trailer wiring bracket, suspension components you can see moving, or anything that routes the line across a brake line, a hose or a wiring harness. And do not put a line through a door opening — a line that runs through a shut door will chafe its own weather seal and can be pinched.

Two details that make the difference between an anchor that works and one that annoys you all summer. First, check that the hood still latches properly with the webbing trapped, and that the seal is not held open — a hood that is not fully latched is a far bigger problem than a loose kayak. Second, tuck or tape the loop when you are not using it. Left to dangle, it will flap at speed, and flapping webbing or a swinging metal eyelet polishes paint.

Two choices, and both are genuinely a matter of what you are carrying.

Rope with a pulley is faster, lighter and stows smaller. The ratcheting pulley means you can snug a line one-handed while holding the boat with the other, which anyone who has loaded a kayak alone in a parking lot will appreciate. The cost is that it can generate more force than a light hull wants, and thin line concentrates that force on a small patch.

Flat webbing with a cam buckle cannot be over-tensioned by hand in any meaningful way, and spreads its load across an inch instead of a few millimeters. The cost is bulk, water retention and tails that need managing. If your boat is a light composite sea kayak, this is the safer choice; the Malone 15-footers above are long enough to do it.

What we would not use is a steel ratchet strap. Not on a hull and not as a bow line. A ratchet handle gives you enough mechanical advantage to damage a boat without feeling that you are doing it, and the metal hardware is a dent waiting to happen. Ratchets earn their place on steel cargo baskets and hitch carriers, which is where our ratchet strap picks send them. The full argument is in ratchet versus cam buckle.

Whichever you choose, the target tension is the same and it is less than people assume: snug enough that the boat does not move when you push the bow sideways, and no more. The hull straps hold the boat down. The end lines only stop it rotating.

The order matters, because tensioning the end lines before the hull straps will pull the boat forward or back off its cradles.

• Hull straps first. Two cam straps over the boat and around the crossbars, buckles on the side of the hull rather than on top of it, snugged by hand. Full method in how to tie down a kayak.
• Attach at the boat’s own hard point. Use the bow and stern toggles or carry handles, or a loop of webbing around the grab handle — not a line hooked over a thin deck edge and not through a scupper hole.
• Run the line down and outward, not straight down. A line that drops vertically does almost nothing about rotation. Two lines from the bow out to each side of the car, making a V, is the strongest arrangement; one line straight to a central anchor is the common compromise and is much better than nothing.
• Snug, do not crank. Both ends at hand tension. Then push the bow sideways: the boat should move with the car, not independently of it.
• Deal with the tails. Coil and tie off every loose end. A flapping tail at 70 mph marks paint, and a tail that reaches a wheel is a genuine hazard.
• Re-check after the first few miles. Everything settles. Pull over once, put a hand on each line, and go.

Using the end lines to hold the boat down. They are not for that. Over-tensioning a bow line pulls the hull down onto the bars and can deform a deck. The hull straps hold the boat; the end lines stop it swinging.

Clipping to plastic. A bumper cover is a cosmetic panel. Under load it flexes, cracks, or tears loose along with the clips holding it, and it will do all three at the worst possible moment.

Skipping them because the trip is short. The failure mode here is a crosswind or a passing truck, and neither cares how far you are going. If the boat is on the roof and the road has a speed limit above 40, fit the lines.

Leaving them on the car year-round. UV destroys webbing and cheap rope. A line that has lived on a hood through two summers is not the line you bought. Store them inside; they cost very little to replace and nothing to inspect.

Forgetting the stern. Half the people who rig a bow line stop there. The stern line is the one that matters when you are overtaken, and it is the easier of the two to attach on most cars because a hatch or trunk lid gives you a convenient place for a loop.

Buy the Ayaport ratcheting rope lines if you want the simplest thing that works. Snug them by hand, keep them off thin deck edges, and keep a pair in the car permanently.

Buy the Seamander kit if your car has nothing at the front to clip to and you would rather solve the whole problem in one order.

Buy the Thule 530 loops if you want the anchor to be the part you never think about again, and the Cajun loops if you would rather spend the difference on the boat.

Buy the Malone 15-foot cam straps if your hull is light composite and you want webbing and hand tension at both ends.

Buy the Rhino USA 4-pack for the straps that go over the boat, and read the cam buckle strap picks if that is the half you are still missing. If you are choosing a carrier at the same time, our kayak carrier roundup is the place to start, and roof racks for cars covers the bars underneath it.