I am a fan of Malone kayak carriers (malone auto racks.com/kayak).  I have owned three different styles over the years.  All have been strong, well made and to my eye, very attractive.  And because they are so thin, I think they are more aerodynamic when unloaded than racks made of aluminum tubing and neoprene. 

The Original Malone J-Racks: I used two sets of the original Malone J-Racks on my PT Cruiser to carry my 17 foot and Lisa’s 16 foot fiberglass touring boats.  I could easily load the boats on these racks.  From a shoulder carry I would slide the bow onto the front J-rack then lift the stern into the rear.  I could do all this from the ground without a step stool.  Because the J-racks were fastened at the outside ends of my Yakima roof racks (yakima-racks.com/Roof), there was even room between them to carry a third kayak as long as its beam was no more than 22 inches.  I used these original J-Racks for almost eight years until I bought a different car.

Malone Sea Wing Cradles and Stinger Kayak Roof Rack Load Assistant: When I traded the PT Cruiser for my Honda C-RV, I hoped to get a car that required fewer repairs, offered the same flexibility and got similar or better gas mileage.  (I reported on my search for this car in an earlier blog.)  I got these attributes for the most part, though it’s hard to find a car company that can design a flexible interior the way Chrysler can. 

What I didn’t count on was the difficulty I would have loading the boats on a car that sat about four inches higher than the Cruiser.  That four inches, my advancing age with it’s accompanying loss of muscle strength, and my being moderately vertically challenged at 5 feet, 8 inches in height, made using the original J-racks impossible.  It required me to lift the full weight of the boats over my head while working them into the racks.  And since I often have to load and unload the boats without help, I needed to find another solution. 

I thought the Malone Sea Wing Cradles (http://www.outdoorplay.com/Malone-Sea-Wing-Kayak-Roof-Rack) with the Stinger Load Assistant (http://www.outdoorplay.com/Malone-Stinger-Load-Assistant) would solve my problem.  I was wrong on this, not because the Sea Wing/Stinger combo wasn’t a good concept or well made, but because of some peculiarities of my car and my size.  Like all the Malone products, these were well made and very strong.  But my car has fixed anchors for attaching the Yakima roof racks.  These are set apart at the absolute minimum distance Yakima recommends for boats like mine, and then only with

warnings to tie them down front and back because of the leverage imposed by the extreme overhangs.  This means that the Stinger just comes to the back edge of the roof instead of angling down the back as it would on a car with a longer, flatter roof. 

To lift the boat onto the roof required me to lift the front of the boat with its bottom parallel with the ground and push it onto the Stinger.  At the same time, I had to raise the boat above my head and shove it forward, keeping it level and on its bottom.  I

couldn’t do it without scraping the keel on the ground (or tarmac or gravel or stones or what ever was on the ground below my car).  Again, if I was three inches taller, I might have accomplished this, but I’m not.  It was no problem with help, but I didn’t always have help, especially at home.  Another issue for me was my inability to reach the end of the inboard wing to fasten the tie down strap, even using a step stool.  A lower car with a longer roof or a few inches in my height would have made a great difference in the usefulness of these racks. 

The New Malone J-Racks and Telos Load Assistant: After struggling for a year and at times not paddling because I didn’t have the help I needed to load or unload the boats, I decided to look for another solution.  I had seen the Thule Hullavator in use and thought it might work (See: Hullavator).  But a quick look at the Thule website convinced me that this wasn’t what I wanted.  The Hullavator does what it claims but has several drawbacks including its weight, its lack of corrosion resistance around salt water and its $560.00 price (I would need two of these).  I also considered a lightweight trailer, such as the Rack’N Roll (See: Rack-and-Roll-66-Kayak-Trailer).  But I really had no place to store it when not in use.  And it lists for around $2,200.00.

That brought me back to the new Malone J-Rack (See: Malone-Auto-Loader-XV-Kayak-Roof-Rack) with its Telos load assistant (See: Malone-Telos-Kayak-Load-Assistant).  I had rejected this system when I settled on the Sea Wing because the Telos wouldn’t work with the original J-racks that I had.  Now that I no longer had those racks, I took a second look.  The Telos temporarily attaches to the new Malone J-Racks and allows the person loading the boat to place it in a cradle at waist level and ratchet the boat up to the J-rack where it can be easily pushed onto the rack.  Looked simple and at $127.95 for each set of J-racks and $247.95 for the one Telos loader that can be used with both J-Racks, I could buy the system to load both boats for less that the cost of one Hullavator. 

The J-racks mounted easily and the Telos units went together smoothly.  There is a learning curve to using this system. Because the Telos cradles were only about three feet apart and my boat is seventeen feet long, most of the boat lies outside the cradles. 

The instructions have you placing the boat in the Telos waist high cradles, then lifting first one side, then the other until the boat is at J-rack level. The issue of the racks sitting close together applied here as well.  If I raised one side too far, the boat would want to slide out of the cradle on the low side.  I solved this by tying a tie down strap to the left hand cradle and wrapping it around the boat in front of the lip of the cockpit.  This did the trick.  The next thing to learn was how to push the kayak from the Telos cradles into the J-racks.  I was really clumsy about it at first.  But now, a firm push up and back drops the boat easily into the J-racks.  I just reverse this process in lowering the boat.  The longer I use this system and become comfortable with it, the more I like it.  Hopefully this system will work for me until I’m too frail to do even that much.  Then maybe a trailer!