Roof rack and box
The roof rack was a necessity for us. We needed to carry windsurf kit and there was no real alternative. The option of carrying quite a lot of stuff up there is what left us free to dedicate the entire interior of the car into becoming a camper.
As ever, the budget was tight, but that didn't stop us from creating a rack that is well adapted for our specific purpose. One of the advantages of the discovery is that it has old style rain gutters. This lets you mount heavy duty roof racks designed for commercial vehicles. As rain gutters are going out of fashion on new vehicles, there are lots of second hand racks becoming available as the vans they were fitted to are being scrapped.
Our main rack is a Mont Blanc heavy duty design for a high roof van. It was second hand but unused, bought off gumtree for £30. It sits rather high off the roof, but it's extremely solid, with very thick bars and can easily take all the windsurf kit and my body weight when I'm up there strapping it down. An unexpected advantage is that the sunroof can still open fully underneath it, which is a fantastic feature especially when cooking in the car.
The discovery is tall enough that it's not really practical to strap anything down safely without getting up on the roof yourself. We used a second, cheap ebay rack to create a step at the rear of the roof. We originally hoped to use it for a little more than this but it was so flimsy that only when both bars were secured together did it gain any kind of structural rigidity. It seems that when buying new roof racks, you get what you pay for. The addition of two checker plate sheets gave me somewhere to walk safely when strapping boards down, without being at too much risk of falling to my death. The checker plate sheets were offcuts from industrial roofing, we then had the edges bent to give them some rigidity. The longitudinal piece has slots cut in it to accommodate the bars of the Mont Blanc. The rear step is screwed down directly into the bars of the flimsy ebay rack.
The passenger side of the rack is left bare, for boards to be tied down. The drivers side carries our roofbox. There is enough space on the rack to fit a SUP board next to the box. Which is seriously impressive.
The box is an old fiberglass design called a 'Quiverack'. It's a specific windsurf design no longer in production. It's a hand-me-down from my dad and is about as old as I am. On a note specific to quiveracks, there are two versions; side, and rear opening. Having used both, I think the rear opening one is by far the better option for windsurf equipment, as you don't need to unpack the entire box every time you want one thing out. I love my quiverack. It is absolutely fantastic, making the whole camper possible by getting smelly wet sails out of the car and up on the roof. I had it on a previous estate car and it revolutionised that vehicle too. I did have to make my own brackets for it as the standard ones weren't big enough for the Mont Blanc. For that, I used strips of pre drilled metal from B&Q which I bent myself using a desk vice and determination.
We also added a rear ladder, another cheap ebay purchase at about £40. It's been great, no complaints and makes life so much easier when trying to climb up onto the roof.
The rack was a great addition, nothing commercially available would do the job and I'm really happy with our solution. It's been tested extensively and carried three windsurf boards, a SUP, surfboard and a full roofbox all the way to Scotland and back. Doing 70 on the motorway, then driving off road too, with no issues at all.
From a cosmetic point of view it does make us stand out, even in a field full of Land Rovers at the LRO show it was visible from the other side of the car park!