Canoe tie-downs for Ford Escape Hybrid

[Jumpser]

Anyone have an Escape Hybrid that they haul canoes on?

My 1996 Honda Odyssey that has been the faithful hauler of my canoes for the past 10 years is dying a suddenly quick death. I've been looking for a replacement vehicle that I can haul my two canoes on, fit my camping gear, my kid, and my two dogs in, and the kicker is that I want it to get good gas mileage too. The Ford Escape Hybrid is the closest I've come to finding this dream vehicle... and I'm still sadly mourning the demise of my old faithful 4 cylinder Odyssey....

Anyway, I went to go test drive one today and I could not find any tow hooks underneath the thing for canoe tie-downs!! I know you can get the tie down straps for under the hood in the front, but I would love to hear if anyone has a solution for the rear tie-down, or even what you do for the front tie-downs if you have one of these vehicles.

Thanks for any suggestions!!

[canoerandy]

My nephew has an Escape, and I have a Pathfinder. What I did was to build a roof rack that bolted down to the fastening system on the roof out of nice straight 2X4s and I put 3 large eye bolts in each properly spaced for two canoes on top. I had to make angled spacers at each of the 4 mounting points to space them off the roof just a bit on the Escape. My Pathfinder allowed the boards to sit right on the factory rack rails. Then I use the ratcheting style tie downs and pull them down tight. I don't even use front or rear ropes. They stay put just fine at highway speeds. The are also very quick to load and unload the canoes.

[valeria]

I frequently carry a 17 foot canoe on my roof rack and need to tie a cord from the nose of the canoe to the front of the FEH.

[bwca]

I see both Thule and Yakima have tools on their websites to help find the right rack for any vehicle. I tried the one on Yakima's site and it seemed pretty straight forward.

[Brent]

I also carry one, and sometimes two, canoes on my 2010 Ford Escape. I use the Yakima rack system and had Yakima "Landing Pads" installed near the front of the roof to make a longer spread between the bars to be more suitable for carrying 16' canoes.

For front-end tie-downs I actually went to the trouble to have a custom-made bar machined to attach to the front bumper using existing holes in the bumper. The bar allows standard eye-bolts to be added. After a couple of prototypes I think I've got a nice front-end canoe/kayak tie-down solution for the Ford Escape and had some extras made to see if anyone else would be interested in buying one. You can see my tie-down solution at http://www.hookedonmyescape.com.