I commonly carry 4 boats on my roof rack. I have a Yakima system with an long bar, 2 sets of their cradles and a "stacker bar". The stacker bar is just a pipe clamped onto the cross bar which can be set vertically. I set the cradles so they all face in towards the bar which is in the center. I lean boats on edge against the stacker bar and resting in a cradle. Then I lean the next boat against the first and put a pad between the two. I do the same thing on the other side. Some straps pulled as tight as I can get it hold everything in place. I can shake the whole car by grabbing the end of one of the boats. They are very secure and you get to show of the fancy top deck of your boat.

> We're relative novices who started with a couple of plastic
> "recreational" kayaks for two adults and three kids 6-9. Now I'm
> finishing a Pygmy Coho and we're seeing that we'll be building many more
> wooden boats, probably one for each person over the next several years.
> Question is how we'll carry them all on the car. We're carrying the
> plastic boats on Thule cradles, which pretty much take up all the space
> available on the Suburban rooftop for two boats. If we were carrying four
> or five lighter wooden boats, could we carry them all on their sides?
> Would each need a J-cradle like Ross makes? Could we make some sort of
> double-layer carrier? Are there commercial solutions? How do others with
> kayaking families handle this? Thanks. Mike