Eddie:
I don't want to oppose Hobie, but most of us out there are not transporting or storing our boats upside down, Actually I know of nobody doing that at all.
I have owned 3 TI's now over the last 6 yrs, and never once have I stored any of my boats upside down. Actually we have traveled the whole country with our TI's on the roof of our SUV, well over 200k miles with our camper in tow.
The last couple years we travel a bit less and spend most of our time divided between our homes in Sarasota, and Key West (FL), sometimes we haul our TI on the roof, and sometimes on our trailer the reason for this is parking in KW is very expensive and difficult to find (there are only 3 trailers spaces in the entire city at the Simonton st launch, and they cost $2.50/hr just for the trailer parking space, you have to park your car in another space (another $2.50 hr)). Needless to say our TI sits on our roof for weeks at a time down there.
I never bought into Hobies cradle thing, and have never owned a set, I simply can't afford them. My choice was spend $500 for the cradles ( I don't even know how much they really cost (embarrassing)), or $10 bucks for some PVC tubing, and make my own. Of course I'm not tellin ya what to do, or not to do, it's your boat not mine.
On the forum here you will find a hundred different trailer threads, and car topping threads, just use the search function of this forum, and check it all out yourself (this forum is really good, with a lot of really smart and friendly people all over the world just sharing their experience, obviously we all love the TI.
Be careful what you ask for, now this is out there you are going to get 500 pics of guys and their boat on the roof or on their trailer (us Hobie people all kind of like to do that).
Heres some of mine.
Locally I just store my TI in our garage on the trailer (takes me two minutes to hook up and go). Notice the boat is right side up on PVC cradles.
This is us with TI on roof (right side up, PVC again, 5 ft roof rack)
This is us on our way to Key West for a month:
This is us on a recent road trip (couple thousand miles):
This is our TI on top of our truck, on top of the Thule Aero bars (5 ft spread). Notice the 1.5" dia x 8 ft long closet poles just shoved under the boat (the closet poles are like $5 bucks each at Home depot), that's all I needed, notice the boat is not upside down. NOTE: You will need 8 foot or longer closet poles (PVC tubing with broom handles stuffed in can also work), but the closet poles are the most handy thing, If you get the bare ones (not pvc coated, just coat them with fence and deck sealer. We don't mount them to anything, we just slide the boat up there and slip them in. When not car topping we just put them in the corner of the garage.
The outside diameter of the poles is pretty important, 1.5" dia OD seems to work best. Too big, and the center of the hull will collapse when you strap the boat down, too small and they fall out.
If we have ours sitting strapped to the roof for sometimes weeks at a time in the hot Key West sun, I sometimes stuff pool noodle under the hull to help even out the load on the hull (pool noodles cost a buck at Walmart)
Hope this help, now wait for the 500 more pics from other proud Hobie owners ( lol)
Funny I just realized looking at the pics, you are looking at 3 different TI's, apparently we like yellow.....
FE