I used to own a Hobie Outback, several years ago. It was awesome for fishing, but I sold it when I sold my vacation home at the lake. I only had to put it on the roof of my 4Runner a couple of times, and it was difficult by myself. I now bought a Hobie Compass for fishing the Charleston area. I chose the Compass for the lighter weight than the Outback. It matters when you are lifting it up to the roof, and I prefer not to overload my roof rack with too much weight.
To assist me in loading the Compass to the roof, I purchased a Reese Canoe Loader.
https://www.amazon.com/Reese-Towpower-7 ... ast_bbp_dpFor $24 I was willing to take a gamble. This was a wise move. The requirement is that you need a trailer hitch on your vehicle. The loader mounts into your hitch and provides a Vertical T-bar that supports one end of your kayak. The key feature of this loader is that it pivots, so standing at the back of my truck, I load the bow of the kayak(hull side UP) onto the T-bar, place a bungee cord over the bow to keep it on the T-bar. I then step back to the stern, lift up off the ground, and walk to front side of truck, pivoting the kayak on the loader until stern of boat is now hullside up on the front crossbar of truck. It is very simple, loader uses very little storage, and provides an important third point of support for Kayak. The kayak is transported with the Tbar loader in place.
I initially tried to load the Kayak with the stern on Tbar and the rotate bow to front of vehicle. I would have preferred this, as this would have had the kayak on the roof with the bow facing forward on the roof of my truck. I discovered that the kayak was too hard to manage with the narrow bow on the ground, and I felt it worked better loading the bow onto the Tbar, then rotating the stern forward.
I'm very impressed with this clever, inexpensive tool. I have since purchased a trailer for my frequent runs to the river, but if I go out of state, I just mount the Yak on the roof and leave the trailer home.