Hi all, wanted to ask if anyone has experience with keeping gear full time in a car rooftop box. I live in the city so have nowhere else to really keep it, but as those boxes don't seem to have ventilation I worry the gear will get moldy/delaminate. Does anyone have experience/solutions with this? Many thanks!

Also - I've been lurking a while and this is my first post :). Great forum you got here!

I do this pretty frequently. My roof box isn't super well sealed and I only sail in salt water so I haven't experienced any rot.
Biggest challenge is finding a box big enough. In my experience the only mass produced one is the Thule Combi 600 from the 80s.

This is a situation where I would loosen my vent screw.

I used to sail with a bloke who rented a garage for his gear near the usual sailing spot. Also close to where he worked versus at least an hour drive home and back if he wanted to get wet after a day healing the sick.

I have a Thule that fits all my wavesailing rig kit on long trips. Sub 30 it's all good if the box can breathe which mine does. Temps topped 43 on last year's NW run, was concerned and kept an eye it all and everything appeared to survive. Not sure I'd want to do it with boards or regularly cook sails though.

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Imax1 said..
This is a situation where I would loosen my vent screw.

I wouldn't. It gets quite humid in there.

To be fair it's rarely over 30 here.

Fact your asking probably says enough but yeah heat and moist is problematic for any long term storage facility, wether in a car/van, rooftop box or even a poorly ventilated storage facility.

Even if it's 30 degrees outside, it'll probably get considerably warmer inside the box.

If you don't have much of a choice and you're willing to accept that your gear doesn't last as long then could be an option and would at least take it out to dry it when back home from a session.

Yup
where do u live? If it's ever over say 35C for a week then you're asking for trouble. Vent screw or not, styro melts in a car quite often so a small box? No thanks

now an then or Europe? Yeah. Permanent use in Oz? Nuh uh

I have a rooftop box that fits up to 7.0 sails. Sails will stay wet in the winter time. The only problem I had was rusty hardware holding the box on staining my white harness lines and white sail.

Thanks for the replies!

it seems the consensus is that under 30C+ it's maybe feasible to leave the equipment in the box for longer periods. This works out for me as I live in Belgium and sail on the sea. Unloading the kit regularly is best, but I'm in an inner city, it's a real pain. Renting a place is a good suggestion, will look into that
For the moment what worries me a bit is that my roof box has no ventilation built in. For those of you that say you have ventilation, is that just due to age or did you install vents? I saw recently a box that had some vents put in, I may look into that if I can find the vents.

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Grantmac said..
I do this pretty frequently. My roof box isn't super well sealed and I only sail in salt water so I haven't experienced any rot.
Biggest challenge is finding a box big enough. In my experience the only mass produced one is the Thule Combi 600 from the 80s.

In Europe we have a few jumbo sized roof top boxes you can buy that are 140cm wide and up to 290long. I can't post links but if you search for Flensboxx or Surflinebox you'll find them (although I don't expect that's too helpful in Oz.)

A couple whirly gigs would be a great idea.

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darthcitrus said..

Grantmac said..
I do this pretty frequently. My roof box isn't super well sealed and I only sail in salt water so I haven't experienced any rot.
Biggest challenge is finding a box big enough. In my experience the only mass produced one is the Thule Combi 600 from the 80s.

In Europe we have a few jumbo sized roof top boxes you can buy that are 140cm wide and up to 290long. I can't post links but if you search for Flensboxx or Surflinebox you'll find them (although I don't expect that's too helpful in Oz.)

I'm actually in Canada, but still unlikely to find one of those boxes. Fortunately here we have a lot of vehicles which can take a board inside.

For my first van I built a box out of plywood long enough for an 8.5m. This box box is a Mnt Blanc made out of some kind of fiberglass. Nice to have the back opening,it has long slots in the bottom for mounting that lets the water drain out. Worth the money it has outlasted 3 vehicles.

One thing to watch for is rusting on the roof of your vehicle. My last one wasn't a very expensive car so I was not as diligent with washing as I should have been, started to rust pretty bad around the rack towers.
Something to watch out for.

Currently, like many North American people, I'm driving a pick-up truck (ute?) and the 6' box is just long enough for wing gear but not windsurfing gear. I had a canopy but mounting a box above that wasn't really possible. So I'm looking at a retractable cover for the box then some racks above it in order to mount my Thule 600. Should let me keep a windsurf quiver and wind quiver on the vehicle without putting anything inside the cab.

2" welded aluminum rack