Given how much I transport boats, like the aforementioned 11,000 miler that I have planned for September and October, I've learned a couple things about boat transport. Similarly, while owning a boat repair business, I get to see how often people do not transport boats properly, particularly when transporting small boats on big trailers.

The issue isn't so much about small boats coming loose and flying off the sides of trailers, but rather how often folks dent-up the decks of singles and doubles by 'improperly' strapping the boat down. (By-the-way, having boats slide-off the outside of trailers at highway speed is not altogether uncommon. We have done our share of repairs on boats broken into three pieces; most commonly fours, doubles, and eights, and then singles in that order regarding frequency.)

To my mind, I reckon folks put these little dings in their boats (typically in the decks) because we're never really taught the fundamental mechanics of strapping boats down to trailers for transport. I know this all sounds immediately too reductionist – you should know I do this by now – but hear me out and tell me if viewing it this way doesn't help.

Typically when folks learn to strap down boats, it's with eights and fours in school and club-rowing programmes. Strapping the boat down on the gunwhale or rigger-flange can be done with just about as much force as your arms can muster and the boat doesn't break. (It's likely, though, that if you're using hard-fibre straps, unlike the Sykes ones, that you're putting dozens of little impressions from the strap into the finish of the boat.) This amount of force produces the desired effect of both keeping the boat from flying off at high speeds as well as keeps the combination of boat and strap gradually sliding where the boat might slide off the edge. Or, in the case of a tightly packed trailer with boats slung up underneath, it keeps boats from gradually working their way over to a neighour and gradually scratching and tapping soft spots into each other after hundreds of miles of rough road. This is more my concern since I have long hauls on a closed-sided trailer that is typically tightly packed.

Perhaps needless to say, the same approach to singles and, in the case of many trailers with wide-spread racks, pairs and doubles doesn't work. Strapping the boat down to the deck with as much force as your arms can muster will likely crack the deck or at least put dented soft spots into it. The concern is, of course, that if you don't put enough force on the strap, there isn't enough force between the boat-strap and the trailer rack to keep it from sliding.

The immediate reaction that I see from folks is that they pad the decks with life preservers or towels. While this can work, too many times it does not. The materials that folks use for padding are often to soft and compressible. So what seems snug at the time of strapping it can often become loose over time as the material compresses. More commonly, though, is that the padding doesn't really redistribute the force over a wider area as it is trying to. In the case of a Sykes, Empacher, Filippi, or any single with that traditional high-crown deck, the force is still concentrated on the crown.

If you're going to use some sort of padding or packer between the boat's end-deck and the trailer rack, it should be relatively hard/dense so it holds its shape under compression. And it should be in the shape of the deck or, at least, in a shape that the edges of the deck touch the packer and not the crown of the deck.

I have Styrofoam packers that have that V-shape cut into them. Still, I don't try to use the force of the strap to hold the packer in place, that can still dent the deck if I really crank it down with all me might. Rather, I tape the packer to the trailer rack with simple packing tape and then lightly strap the boat down. The combination of the tape, boat, and strap will hold the packer in place, and the boat isn't going to slide off the side of the foam packer with a slightly snug strap around it.

So the key is to make sure the packer isn't going anywhere first. After you do that, you don't need to use much strap force at all.

For those of you with a bit more confidence in your understanding of racking a small boat on a trailer, you might like this other technique that I use with singles on my trailer: I use the strap as my packer.

Here's the technique: Leave a bit of extra slack in the strap so you can lift the boat a couple inches off the trailer rack before the strap goes taught. It has to be buckled to do this, but you'll have all that extra strap hanging there. Use that excess strap to wrap tightly and neatly around the buckled-portion of the strap. Coil it up like a snake, and as you do this tightly it will pull the boat down on top of the coil.

The effect you're looking for here is that the crown of the deck is resting on the coiled up strap, but more importantly the tension of the strap is putting a pinching force on the corner where the end-deck joins with the hull. Like with the foam packers, this is where you want the force to be.

To complete this technique, tie off the end of the strap securely so the coil cannot undo itself. For longer trips, I wrap a little packing tape around the strap coil and on to the racks to make sure it doesn't undo itself.

I hope you can use this information and do spread the word when you see someone folding up a bath towel to put under the deck of a boat on a trailer. You can do it that way, but the chances are higher that they'll dimple the deck, if not outright crack it.