8 Best Dry Bags for Kayaking

Same shell, same roll top, same included phone case as our top pick — the difference is 55 liters and a pair of backpack straps. If your kayaking involves a tent, a sleeping pad and three days of food, this is the Earth Pak to load instead of the 20-liter.

It is the bag in this set we point at for kayak camping. The main compartment swallows a full camp kit, the front zip pocket takes a headlamp and a chart, and an interior mesh pocket keeps a phone or a passport where you can find it. The adjustable pack straps cinch down hard enough that a half-loaded bag stops flopping behind you, which matters more than headline capacity on a short trip.

Empty, it weighs 2.8 pounds, and the shoulder straps are wide and stiff compared with a hiking pack — comfortable on the walk from car to water, less so on a mile-long portage. Earth Pak states a five-year warranty on the bag, which takes some of the worry out of dragging it over rocks.

The round bottom is the trick: spread it open, roll the top three to five times, buckle it, and the sack traps enough air to float beside you if it goes over the side. That single behaviour is why this is our value pick — a 20-liter bag with proper backpack straps that comes back up when you drop it.

The build is layered PVC with welded seams and heavy-duty buckles, and the 20-liter size gets backpack straps rather than a shoulder sling, which matters when the walk from the car turns out longer than planned. The shell is flexible enough to squash into a hatch or between your knees once the air is out of it.

Durability is the question mark. The fabric and welds hold up to ordinary use, but the strap anchors and seams are where a failure starts when one happens, so check those joints before your first trip. Treat it as a river-and-lake bag rather than something to drag through a rock garden, and it does everything the pricier sacks do.

Eighty liters is a different category of object. Laid out, this duffel measures about 25.6 by 12.6 by 13.8 inches, which is two people’s camping kit — tents, pads, sleeping bags, a stove — or one paddler’s gear for a week with room left over for wet shoes.

The roll top closes with the same three or four folds as everything else here, and the coated shell has an external zip pocket plus an interior pocket for the things you don’t want to dig for. Side straps and a top handle let two people carry it between them, and the adjustable strap rigs cross-body or as a backpack. Rain and spray stay out; it is the same idea as the smaller sacks, scaled up.

We think of it as a boat-to-camp duffel rather than a pack. Loaded, it is heavy, and the shoulder straps are webbing rather than padded — fine for the twenty steps from cockpit to tent, punishing on a genuine portage. If your trip means carrying the boat and the gear any distance, split the load across two smaller bags instead.

Five liters, clear walls and the lowest price of anything here. For a sit-on-top paddler who wants a spare t-shirt, sunscreen and a phone to survive a capsize, that combination is genuinely useful: you can see what is in the bag without opening it, and the whole thing rolls down small enough to stash under a bungee.

The PVC is thicker where it counts, at 0.6 mm across the base and 0.3 mm up the sides, and the roll top buckles shut with adjustable shoulder straps plus a side handle for carrying. It comes in eleven colors, all transparent, at 8 by 8 by 13 inches, and there is a waterproof phone case in the box.

The thin side walls are the catch. A tear is a real possibility if the bag rides against anything sharp, and a dry bag that fails on the day the weather turns is worse than no bag at all. Put this one inside a larger sack or use it for beach days where a soaking is inconvenient rather than disastrous, and set it down on sand rather than gravel.

Reinforced webbing loops and D-rings run along this bag, which is a small thing that changes how you use it: clip a pair of fins, a wet bag or a bottle to the outside and keep the inside for things that must stay dry. The front zip pocket does the same job for a phone, a key and a sunscreen stick that would otherwise sink to the bottom of a roll top.

It is a 10-liter bag with a single crossbody strap; the 20 and 30-liter versions switch to two shoulder straps for backpack carry. The shell is PVC-coated polyester and nylon, it weighs about 1.1 pounds, and Cressi covers it with a two-year limited warranty.

Read the water-resistance wording carefully. Cressi describes the roll-down top as a barrier against splashes, spray and sudden rain, which is exactly what a kayak cockpit throws at a bag on a normal day and is not the same as a sack rated to be submerged. If your gear regularly goes swimming, choose one of the heavier welded bags here instead.

Where it earns its place is as the bag that stays packed and gets grabbed: light, tidy, with a pocket and a clip point for everything you need on the water and nothing you don’t. The 10-liter size is the one for a narrow boat where a full 20-liter sack is forever in the way of your feet.

If you paddle with a phone, keys, a card and one dry layer, this set covers all four for less than most single bags. The piece that earns it is the waist pouch: a 9.1 by 6.5 inch waterproof pack on a 33.5 to 47.5 inch strap that stays on you while you paddle, instead of sitting in a bag you have to open with wet hands.

The 5-liter bag has a double zip-lock under the roll top — press the two seals shut, then fold and buckle — which gives water a second barrier right where it usually gets in. It is 500D tarpaulin, it floats when sealed, and the shoulder strap is removable and adjusts from 27.6 to 49.6 inches so it can clip around a thwart or a deck line.

The accessories are the weak links. The waist pouch seam and the phone case are the parts that let go, and 5 liters holds a towel and a layer and not much else. Test the case with a paper towel before you trust a phone to it, and treat the pouch as the place for keys and a card rather than anything you would mourn.

Packed as a set for a day paddle, though, it works: phone and wallet on your waist, dry clothes in the bag, a spare case for the keys. It is the kit we hand to someone new to paddling who has not yet accumulated a shelf of bags.

Two liters is barely a bag — a phone, keys, a wallet and a snack and you are done. What that buys you is a sack small enough to clip to the deck rigging and forget about, which is exactly what plenty of paddlers want out of a dry bag.

The 500D PVC is thick for something this small, with high-frequency welded seams and a roll top that buckles shut against a pair of D-rings. At 7.5 inches square it fits a compact camera or a spare lens with a useful layer of padding around it, and it floats once sealed and rolled.

This is the bag we treat as a ditch bag: keys, phone and a headlamp while a 20-liter does the real work. If you need a towel and a change of clothes, it is not the bag for you — that is the point where you move up to the 10 and 20-liter sacks on this list.