I like traveling with my kayak racked cockpit-down, hull-up. Most kayakers rack the boat hull down, cockpit up. Cockpit up, you should really cover the cockpit, meaning another piece of gear, and the cover somehow needs to be attached in case it blows off while on the road. I prefer to eschew the cover and rack the boat upside down.
Most rack systems are made for kayaks to ride cockpit up. An issue is, kayaks don’t slide onto the racks well when they are upside down. The deck rigging and cockpit resist when sliding the upside down boat on from the rear, and if you slide it on cockpit up, the deck rigging makes it hard to rotate the boat upside down.
When I saw Malone’s Seawing rack, I thought there was a rack that would work well for upside down kayaks. I was right about that. I was told the Seawings worked well for sliding the boat on from the rear, but I find the kayak hull doesn’t slide well over the Seawings–they’re kind of grippy. I loaded the boat cockpit up and it wasn’t as easy rolling the kayak upside down. The Seawing is grippy and I couldn’t get much fulcrom for rolling while gripping it from the stern at the top of my reach.
Once loaded and strapped, the Seawing held the kayak like it was glued in place. No movement at all. So that part worked great. An unexpected bonus was that I seem to get better gas mileage using the Seawing racks than I previously got with my home-made foam carriers or with my Thule Slip 'n Slide saddle system, by a couple MPG. That really surprised me and I can’t explain why.
I think in the future I will use some sort of slippery padding on the rear Seawing to make it easier to slide the boat up.
If there are any others who rack their kayaks cockpit down, I’d be interested in hearing about how you load the boat and get it into the upside down position.