Solo canoe end floatation bags

[Guest]

How do you get all your junk in the boat with those huge bags? Not to mention the pooch. I'd love to add a margin for safety, but not sure I could fit a good bag on each end.

They don’t have to be “huge bags”. We have some stem floatation bags that are barely 20” long. Those just fill the vee of the stems, where I don’t want much gear weight in any case.

When I need every inch of storage space I use a DIY’ed dry bags, tapered for canoe stems, filled with lightweight gear. Made of heat sealable 400D Packcloth they might be more dog paw and claw resistant than many float bags.

P9081205 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

Easy enough to strap/lace in place as extra floatation, even when I don’t tie in the rest of the gear.

Same for the decked canoes, where storage is really at a premium.

P8111157 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

That heat sealable Seattle Fabrics stuff is really handy for custom shaped dry bags, and the process is surprisingly easy, especially after you have made the first one.

http://www.canoetripping.net/forums/forum/general-paddling-discussions/diy/83031-making-diy-dry-bags

 

[Steve in Idaho]

How do you get all your junk in the boat with those huge bags? Not to mention the pooch. I'd love to add a margin for safety, but not sure I could fit a good bag on each end.

It helps to have a bigger boat.

When I put the 60" bags in a solo canoe, it's for a day trip on whitewater. I could carry enough gear with those bags in the MR Guide for multi-day trips, but it's going to be backpacking gear. I put those 60' bags in the 16' Prospector rigged as a solo canoe, and still have room to carry a pretty comfy camp. One thing about big float bags is that you can stuff items against or under them and just inflate them to whatever room is left. Unless your gear packs really dense, it's not so much about holding air as displacing water.

 

[Guest]

It helps to have a bigger boat.

When I put the 60" bags in a solo canoe, it's for a day trip on whitewater. I could carry enough gear with those bags in the MR Guide for multi-day trips, but it's going to be backpacking gear. I put those 60' bags in the 16' Prospector rigged as a solo canoe, and still have room to carry a pretty comfy camp.

Yup, Samesame. I have 60” float bags for a couple of our 14 – 15 foot downriver day boats; those fill 10 feet of the hull, leaving just enough room for the set and my legs. There’s a reason I prefer at least a 16 foot boat, with some depth, for tripping. If I were a lightweight guy and a UL packer that would be different. I am neither.

it's not so much about holding air as displacing water.

Yup again. Those DIY heat sealable canoe-stem tapered dry bags are very handy. I don’t usually tie in all of my gear, but strapping/tying those canoe stem tapers, filled with lightweight gear, doesn’t take long, and they are nicely vee form-fitting at displacing water in the ends.

I am still amazed at the volume of lightweight stuff a properly sized open-boat tapered dry bag will hold. Stuffing a cylindrical dry bag in a vee tapered stem is akin to putting a round peg in a square hole.

Come this spring’s DIY heat sealable dry bag shop extravaganza, making under-deck tapered bags for a friend’s Loon and a custom mandolin dry bag, I’ll be making a couple more open canoe stem tapers.

I may need to order more of that heat-sealable purple Packcloth at a heavily discounted $8 a yard. Making that stuff is too much fun, and I ain’t done yet.