Having a hard time finding and deciding on car top carriers for two 12 foot Pungos. Tried a sportrack mooring 4 in 1 carrier which is supposed to allow you to load two kayaks or fold down and hold one. Unfortunately The keel did not allow it to sit on there. Even tried it with the cockpit facing inward but that was even worse. I keep reading all the reviews for the carriers but it seems there’s a lot of bad ones out there. Also, since these have decent Keels I’m worried that I need a specific one.
Have a Hyundai Tucson SUV with Factory rack that has cross bars already.
You will mostly hear either Thule or Yakima for either full systems or add-ons to existing cross bars. There is a reason, they are solid.
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That said, in most of these Jbar systems you will have other than a 100% match of the shape of the hill to the carrier. Solve it with proper strapping and bow/stern lines. So not sure what the problem was.
Later add - I don’t use Jbars because they are fundamentally more difficult to load solo than just about anything else… But OPer’s issue seemed to be about hull profile.
Problem with J-racks is that it can be difficult to load a kayak while trying to turn it on it’s side. A dedicated bar and tower set with saddles from Thule or Yakima, Inno and others is more expensive, but in the long run, you’d be happier with it. There are a lot of used saddles on eBay for a lot less than new and carrying the kayaks hull down on saddles usually fixes any problems with a sharp keel shape.
I hope that pile has front tie downs.