Yakima Heavy Duty Straps
Yakima Heavy Duty Straps — a pair of 16-foot kayak cam straps with a padded cam buckle.
Kayak Cam Straps, Not Ratchets
This matters more than anything else on the page. These are cam buckle straps, not ratchets.
A ratchet gives you mechanical advantage, and on a kayak that is a liability, not a feature. It is entirely possible to ratchet a composite or thermoformed hull out of shape — and people do, every season.
A cam buckle tightens to hand tension and stops. That is the correct amount of force for a boat.
The Rubber Cover
The cam is galvanised steel in a soft rubber jacket. That is there so the buckle can rest against a hull or a painted roof without leaving a mark.
Lay the buckle on the boat rather than letting it hang and tap the door all the way home.
Two Kayak Cam Straps, 16 Feet Each
Sixteen feet goes right around a bar and over a boat with tail to spare. For one kayak on a standard rack you want two — one over each crossbar.
What We Will Not Tell You
Yakima do not publish a working load limit or a breaking strength for these, so we are not going to print one. Anyone quoting you a number for these particular kayak cam straps is making it up.
What we will say is that they carry a limited lifetime warranty, and that strap failure on a properly loaded boat is almost always the anchor point letting go, not the webbing.
Always Use Bow and Stern Lines
Straps over the bars carry the boat. Bow and stern lines stop it pivoting and hold it if a mount fails. Both, every time.
At our Clearwater shop.
