I am not a big fan of the stacker or J racks. I have a pair and it really affected the car with a big cross wind .  This was with 15 foot Wilderness plastic kayak.

I like the Thule glide and slide... They are the best...They are easy to load because the back saddles are smooth, and they enable you to load the kayak from the rear of the vehicle.  Just slide the kayak on the rear saddles and drop it down on the front saddles.  The front saddles do all the gripping.

I have a chesapeake 18 and use yakima rollers on the rear rack and saddles on the front. The boat sits upright and I use a cockpit cover when traveling. Easy to load from the rear single-handed (I'd hate to try and load it on J-racks by myself). And, as dogger54 said, less susceptible to crosswinds. 

Thanks for the replies! This a new set up for a new vehicle that will be used for much longer trips. The trips I took with the Auk on the old vehicle were less than a dozen short trips, and I used what I had for a couple of older plastic boats....fixed, "J" cradles....I was never worried about the short plastic boats, I think I could drag them with a rope to my nearest lake and not hurt them much. I have Too much work and joy in the Auk to have it damaged by poor transport methods.      TKS

My brother-in-law turn me on to the Thule.  He leaves his Thule glide and slide on all year.  In fact he snowbirds to Florida for the winter and leaves his kayak on his jeep for 6 months at a time. So he his put about 20K miles in all kinds of condition on his saddles.  His Thule's are four years old now and still work great.... The carpet on the rear saddles is still in good shape.  His Thules straps have faded the blue color.  But they still work great.

Maybe I'm just cheap but I have been using factory rails with foam blocks and straps, with a bow tie down on my Ch 16lt and CH 17lt. without problems for several years at speeds up to 75 mph.  If i am feeling strong I toss the boat on from the side.  When tired I put the kayak down behind the car overlapping the wheel well on the side. Then lift the bow onto the back foam pad, pick up the stern and just slide it on.  Seems to work fine. My one concession is that I got some rubber sort of 1/2 round stick on molding to put on the back of the car right where it bends down so that if i drop the kayak at an angle and it hits the car rather than the rack it doesn't scratch the car.  

At worst i get a few scratches on the hull from sand getting caught in the foam.  However, the bottom has worse scratches from beaching and rocks etc.  After 5 years I sanded it, slapped a bit of epoxy in the deep scratches, a coat or two of varnish and it's good to go.  

After all, if it was to pretty I would be afraid to have fun.  

Ed

I've had 3 on my Fit...

It's a little hairy, but if you strap it down right and drive slow it's cool.

Dan

barring incident you can see this feat on Friday ;-)

I think I will go with a fold down "J" cradle for one boat, and the rollers with saddle for the other boat. When the 58" bars show up I should have plenty of width to do it that way. I sent the stacker back when it got here yesterday, and ordered the replacements at the same time. It's nice to have options that work, but nicer to know if they work well!    Thanks again for the replies.