: Was planning to use them for tie-down bungees and gunwale safety
: lines, with heavier-duty ss padeyes at the bow & stern.
: Hearing that the cable ties are easily bent is giving me pause.
: All would be installed by drilling oversized holes, filling them
: w/dookieschmutz and re-drilling the correct size for the bolts.
: Nick also suggests epoxying the washers and nuts to the
: underside of the deck so that the fittings can be removed when
: the time comes to revarnish and reinstalled afterwards. Today I
: came across a store with plastic Hobie fittings that thread into
: their rotomolded plastic hulls. The holes for these fittings
: would be pretty big, however- about seven eigths of an inch.
: Finding nuts and washers for them could be interesting as well.

: In a related question, as a sailor, I am used to cleats. The
: 4" nylon ones are light and strong enough to be useful
: without being too big to be placed at the bow & stern.
: Kayaks seem to simply not have cleats. Is there a reason for
: this?

Hi Paul,
I've seen mooring cleats on one kayak, years ago. It was a tank of a kayak, and had something like half a dozen cleats scattered about the deck. Never saw it on the water, though.
Kayaks don't need mooring cleats, as Bill said, they're taken out of the water and not moored.
I've seen a few that had cam cleats used as towing points but mostly it would be clam cleats for the skeg line.

To 'tie' objects to a kayak, they're usually stuck under decklines.

The only major use for cleats at the bow and stern would be as fastening points for rooftop transporting. And a line from the bumper/towing-eye on the car, looped around the hull and run back to the rear bumper/towing-eye as a spring-line (and vice versa) works well enough to not need cleats.

Mike Savage
South West Cork