Yesterday on my way to the water I noticed some buffeting going over the gateway bridge and when I crossed the bridge at around 80 kph the roof racks, two boards in bags and an attached pull out awning left the roof as a single unit and landed on the road luckily not hitting anyone or being hit by anybody. I managed to clear the road of the debris before an accident occurred. The traffic was medium. The boards were a 65 and 52 wide slalom in bags and were side by side on the roof.







As you can see by the pics the racks are attached by hooks to a saddle bolted to the roof of a kluger. When I am travelling with the van or on a long trip I usually add a ratchet strap over the top and under the roof to hold the whole package down onto the roof. This was not the case yesterday as both boards weighed about 6 kg ea and it was a local trip though mostly on 100 kph freeway.

I could reshape the brackets and reinstall the racks but I would never trust them again.

I will therefore fabricate new fully bolted mounts and drill and bolt the bars in place. Therefore all the bolts will be of equal strength.

I always thought the weakest part of carrying boards on the roof was the ties - ropes, straps etc. not so in this case.

Again how incredibly fortunate that this had such a benign outcome. Even the boards only received minimal damage. I still tremble when I think how very badly this could have gone.