One thought about placing your boat in the flat bed of a pickup, then supporting the rear with a bed extender is the contact point to the bed would be the center of the hull only (possibly causing distortion. Then near the back the bed extenders are very skinny (typically 2" or 3" tubing). When we go to our key west house we often leave our TI on the roof several weeks at a time in the hot Florida sun. The back of the boat is supported by a hitch mounted T-bar on our SUV (same convertible T-bar/ bed extender most people use), we can use the same T-bar/ bed extender on either SUV, or our pickup. When using these we get a lot of hull distortion at the three strap down contact points (either on the suv roof or our contractor bars (Thule Aerobars). One easy solution would be to instead of sliding the boat directly onto the bed and allowing the back to sit on the extender cross bar, just go out and buy a couple cheap pieces of PVC tubing at Home depot. A ten ft piece costs $5-10 bucks. No need to bolt it down to anything, just slide it under the boat along the 11 inch centered grooves that are on all Hobie kayaks. Depending on which model Hobie you have, the PVC tubing diameter varies. The whole trick is to put in the right size tubing so the center of the hull is elevated above the truck bed maybe 1/2 inch or so when placed initially. Of course the hull still distorts a little in the heat, but once the center touches the truck bed flat surface it stops distorting. On a boat like a TI two ten ft long 1.5" PVC pipes would likely suffice. Just strapping the boat down traps the pipes enough so they won't go anywhere. Actually no need to bother trying to guide the boat in over the pipes, just throw the boat in the back (like you likely do currently), then just slip the pipes in under the boat afterward, then strap it all down. I just use 1" nylon straps thru the floor cleats in the truck bed, the boat stays pretty centered all by itself. Do the same on the bed extender strap the back of the boat down pinching the pipes in between. When not using the pipes I just stand them up in the corner of the garage. I use the same set of PVC pipes to support our TI on our SUV, and also when putting the boat on the roof of our pickup on contractor bars, and for short trips in town just slide the boat into the truck bed with the pipes laying over the bed extender and the truck bed. Nothin bolted down, just pipes stuffed under the hull, ( used to use pool noodles, but the PVC pipes work much better). We don't care much about scratching the underside of our hull, no matter how careful you are after a year it's all scratched up anyway just from normal use. The scratches don't seem to affect speed at all (at least nothing I can detect). All the huuls are extremely strong thick and durable, we bounce of rocks in rapids, scrape over oyster beds, scream into the sand beach as fast as possible when beaching etc, and haven't been able to damage our hulls (obviously they look like they went thru WWII). When not car or truck topping we store out TI on the trailer with almost the same PVC tubing on 11" centers (but on the trailer the pvc tubes are bolted down at the front and back (nothing in the middle). The boats been stored that way in the garage a couple three years now with no issues. Seems to work anyway. Sure beats tryin to sail around in a bent boat (been there done that) Hope this helps FE
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