Dry Bag & Stuff Sacks - Whats The Lightest? | A Guide to Rucksack Liners Dry Bags and Stuff Sacks

Hi folks, it's Seamus from Outdoors Inspiration. Welcome to Outdoors Inspiration Outdoor Essentials. I'm at Ditsworthy Warren today. They might not look familiar or significant to you. Maybe it does if you're local. This is the site where War Horse was filmed. It's the site of Narrowcots Farm. Looks very distinctive in the movie anyway. Anyway, what we're going to talk about today? Stuff sacks. I've got today a fantastic solution to the cheapest, lightest stuff sacks that you're going to find. Watch this space. Hi folks, so welcome to Outdoors Inspiration Outdoor Essentials and tonight I've got to announce the winner of the Pocket Rocket 2 giveaway. I can't do it straight away and that's not because I'm trying to keep you stringing right the way through this video, but it's actually Tuesday whilst I'm filming this. I've got to give people an opportunity to enter this right up until the end of the month. So I'm going to add a little bit at the end of this which I will film on Thursday morning once the giveaway is closed. Today, however, I want to talk about stowage of equipment and stuff sacks and dry sacks and that sort of thing. And I've got some personal views about that and I'll start off with that caveat right at the very beginning. These are just my opinions about the stuff that I do in the places that I go with the things that I have. Other people will have different views and I'm just sharing with you the way that I go about doing stuff. Now I have got a solution to the whole keeping things dry in your rucksack thing, how to store things in smaller bags, bigger bags and you're going to love it. It's cheap as chips. I'm starting to sound like Dickinson with his flipping real deal now. So initially what I've got for you this evening is an ultralight rucksack liner that costs very very little. In fact, I think you can probably buy about 10 of them for £1.50. The best ones come from Tesco. Get the ultra durable ones but let's start off with a bin liner. You know, it's waterproof, it's relatively durable. As I say, the best ones I've found come from Tesco. You might have your own views. Other supermarket brands are available. But why not? It holds 70 litres, it keeps everything dry within your rucksack. Can't see a problem with that. Too big? You want stuff that's smaller that can keep stuff compartmentalised inside the rucksack as well. Got it. What about a freezer bag? These ones are from Morrison's. I find that Morrison's produce the best tie top freezer bags. Cheap as chips again. I think you can get about 30 for about £1.50. So they may not be the most durable option but crikey it's replaceable after a day's hike isn't it? Other supermarket brands are available. Asda. In Petra's palisades pack that she wears I put in her bed, her blanket, her jacket and her other accoutrements and they're sealed up in an Asda zip top freezer bag. And she spends far more time in a river and in a bog than I do. She's in and out the river, she's splashing about and every time I come to unzip her pack her stuff's perfectly dry. Quite amazing. So that about wraps it up for tonight. That's where we'll leave it. Zip bag, smaller things, zip top bag, works a treat. Have a good night. We'll see you soon. Come on in Petra. Hello Seamus. Yeah. What do you mean not Gucci enough? What do you mean we've got to drive outdoor consumerism to ensure that the leisure industry retail providers are making sure that we're up to date with the latest spec equipment? But that just costs money. All right. Yeah okay. That seems daft to me. Okay right. Cheers now. Bye. Apparently that isn't it. Apparently there's some other things I've got to talk about. So let's start at the beginning. Many of the items that we buy for outdoor use come in their own little stuff sack. And this is a beautiful little stuff sack. Came with an inner tent in it that now lives with the main tent. And that does nicely. That's siliconized nylon with a ripstop nylon there. That's going to do a really good job of containing things if I want to put things in the lid of my rucksack. This is another one that came with a floor for the tent. Another one that I've used for probably about 10 years keeping things in the lid of my rucksack. Quite nice really. But it didn't cost me anything. Well it did when I bought the item. But let's start thinking about the things that we can reuse and repurpose because we've actually got probably quite a few stuff sacks hanging about the place that we haven't really thought about. Let's talk about what we're going to line our rucksacks with. Your rucksack may boast that it's waterproof if it's got a roll down top and it's made by a company that's specifically making that type of rucksack. It probably isn't a walking rucksack. You can put a rainproof cover on it but again if the pack becomes immersed things are going to get wet inside. So we do need to line the inside of our rucksack. It's vitally important. Now a bin liner may well do the trick. You probably need something a little bit more robust while you're jamming things into the rucksack and taking things out of the rucksack. So perhaps think about let's upgrade from the bin liner a fertilizer sack that's been washed out. My dog food bags come in 15 kilogram bags which are quite large, quite robust. Just snip the top off of that, wash it out and reuse it and repurpose it in here. The majority of the young people that we see coming to the tent halls for scrutineering have got their rucksacks lined out with a robust bin liner and that's all that's required of them. Now I'm not saying that's necessarily the right option. It's a option. There are more robust ways of going about this. So what do I use? And that's what I'm going to talk about. What do I use and what I've used in the past and how you go about doing it. It's up to you really isn't it? So a rucksack liner that I use for a considerable time was made by Podsacs. 60 to 80 litres and it's pretty robust this. You'd have to go some to do any damage to a rucksack liner like this. It'll take some abuse. It's PU coated textile. It's tape seams on there. It's pretty waterproof. Eventually the tape will probably give out. It hasn't yet and it does a really really robust and good job. But for many people they want to lessen the load and to be honest with you if you start looking after the grams in your rucksack people say well how do you get away with an eight or a six kilogram rucksack? You look after the grams first then the tens of grams then the hundreds of grams and that weighs significantly more than a siliconized nylon rucksack liner. Seems petty but with every gram we add on we're adding load to our rucksack and we're adding bulk to our rucksack as well. And to be perfectly honest I'm not too fussed about it. I can't get excited but currently for my rucksack I'm using an Osprey 50 to 70 litre siliconized nylon rucksack liner. It does the job. It really does. It's robust enough and it meets that balance of lightweight enough to fit within the bag and keep everything I need contained. I seldom ever roll this all the way down and then clip it in because the chances of my rucksack getting immersed are pretty slim. Not impossible but pretty slim. It's happened to me once in 1986. In 1986 10 tours 55 mile with my mates in the air force. Geordie stood on the other side of the river Geordie catch my rucksack threw it and then it went into the river totally immersed and that was the one day of my life that I didn't have a rucksack liner. I had a very cold and very wet night that night. Those of you who were around for 1986 10 tours on Dartmoor that was a pretty horrendous horrendous weather event that we went through with that. And then of course there's always Ortlieb. I generally use these on my boat and in kayaks and the like because I know they're not going to become damaged with anything they're going to come into contact with unless it's a knife I suppose but otherwise they're pretty robust. At the end of the day don't let the marketing hype drive your purchasing decision. The only piece of advice I really can offer is to say get a range and selection of dry bags or stuff sacks that suit your needs i.e they will contain what you want in a variety of sizes. I would also go for a variety of colors now that kind of like tunes in with the brain doesn't it? That color I've got that in it that color I've got that in it. It may not be a cognitive thing you may not think ah right the red bag contains this but certainly it will have an imprint if you always pack things in a particular way a different colored bag for a different purpose. Some bags come in sets so the exped ones for example will come in a set that have a variety of colors. Sea to Summit will do exactly the same and so will other leading manufacturers so having a variety of colors would be helpful. Some will be PU coated with tape seams and those will probably be the least durable. They'll seem like it initially but actually the PU coating will eventually end up coming away and the tape seams will come away. So this particular bag from Sea to Summit weighs about 40 grams I think on the scales and it takes 13 liters. Another small one from Sea to Summit and then there's the Exped one. So there's a whole range of dry bags from Exped. Now they're all pretty durable those I've had these ones for a number of years and they've just lasted to be honest with you different colors different sizes different purposes they don't all go with me every time um I just use appropriate ones for the appropriate time. Now what I tend to do is I'll align the rucksack with a rucksack liner and then I organize things so these other stuff sacks or dry bags are just there to organize my equipment so when I get to my campsite I know what's where. Some people don't do that some people will just use the individual bags and everything goes into their rucksack that's fine everything's waterproof some people will just use one big bag liner and put everything into that whatever floats your boat. I'm not an advocate of anything in particular except for the way that I do things for me. So this is a range of silnylon stuff sacks made by a firm called Ookwerks and Ookwerks make bespoke silnylon products and bespoke tent products. They've recently changed hands and they've got a new owner Chris who's the new owner at Ookwerks very kindly sent me a set of his stuff sacks I'd actually ordered a different one and there was a little bit of a problem with it and he sent me another set out so I was very grateful to Chris for that so I'm going to put a link in my description to Ookwerks and you can find the new the new company there. So here we go siliconized nylon in a very very lightweight dry sack I can't remember the weight of these I did put them on the scales individually but they are very very lightweight and very tenacious with ripstop nylon. The stitching is of a fantastic quality and I'll just demonstrate that for you now. So there's my platypus and I'm just going to empty that into a silnylon stuff sack there's a couple of liters of water there now the pressure inside this stuff sack it's quite phenomenal really. I know it's dribbling away I know it's not absolutely watertight but how watertight do you want it to be that's um that's a pretty good indication of the stitching there isn't it. So really the question is how tenacious do you need your bag to be? You know if you're holding kit inside your rucksack does it need to have a roll top closure and make it absolutely waterproof and watertight in which case you need a dry bag. Are you really going to be paddling up the Orinoco river using your dry bag as a paddle as you go? I don't know I tend to use them because it's what's available on the market I come with replaceable catches on the top here so that if one of these wears out or breaks you can replace it. I've never broken one in my life you know I'm more likely to wear a bag out or put a hole in it before that happens but you're paying for that when you buy that product but they are very very nice products very well manufactured and absolutely watertight. I use any one of the stuff sacks or dry sacks that I've shown you throughout my little collection here at any one time I use whatever's appropriate to carry whatever I'm carrying on the day that I'm carrying it it makes no odds to me and that's up to and including the Morrison's freezer bag because they're very useful and it's up to and including a bin bag although I would probably upgrade that and go for the fertilizer bag to be perfectly honest. Now I hope that's been of some use to somebody somewhere watching this video because I know it could be a minefield these things aren't cheap you know when somebody's asking you for 10 15 or 20 pounds and in some cases 30 pounds for a rucksack liner. Don't forget there's always the fertilizer bag or Morrison's tie top freezer bag or as the ziplock freezer bag makes no odds really but it's it can be a bit confusing if you're new to wild camping or you're new to the outdoors and you're thinking what do I need to put my kit in well it's not rocket science is it just keep it waterproof keep it out the way keep it organized and you'll be fine absolutely fine. The rest of it how Gucci you want to be how you want to organize your kit well only you can answer that really but we all like nice Gucci things from time to time it feels nice still nylon's got a very nice feel about it hasn't it so anyway I'll be back in a minute to to announce the winner of the MSR pocket rocket 2 giveaway as I said I can't do that right now because it's not it's not the end of the month at the moment while I'm filming this so I will film this either from the same location if I'm feeling like I want to come back out here again or you'll see me from a different location in just two ticks see in a second right back again as you can see it's not the same setting place or day for that matter there's been a few sharp showers so I've I've taken a more sheltered spot to finish this off it doesn't hurt to take a moment of reflection sometimes when you're videoing things I've been thinking about the sea to summit bags you know they're really lightweight these ultra seal bags with the ones with the replaceable catches on although they're extremely lightweight in fact you could probably have a game of volleyball with one they're very durable anyway I'm digressing we're here to announce the winner of the MSR pocket rocket 2 but before I do that I'd like to say thank you very much to all the subscribers to the channel I'm really really grateful I've got some really positive feedback coming through lots of comments and dialogue ongoing and I'm very very grateful thank you very much indeed folks where's um where's everybody gone ah there you are so to everybody that entered the draw I put your name on a piece of paper sea to summit bag everybody's names there we go nothing left in there and we'll just seal this down what I do like about the dry seal bags from sea to summit is that they're absolutely airtight which means that they're watertight anyway it doesn't get much more random than this does it so the winner is Pipkin 03 Pipkin 03 I'll be getting in contact with you and you are now the winner of an MSR pocket rocket 2 well done congratulations I'll be sending this to you in due course I need to get in contact with you first and find out where you want me to send it and a huge thank you to everybody from Petra and I for taking part in this giveaway I'm truly grateful to you we'll be having more giveaways in the future I just got to think of a different format for it I'm not so comfortable with this whole subscribe and share thing I think a competition of some sort would be quite good I need to come up with an idea of how to do that so bear with me bear with this channel I hope you like what we're doing if you do please give us a like if you're new to the channel it's the first time you've seen it give us a subscribe I'd be really really grateful if you like what we're doing and I'm always going to get back to comments so don't hesitate to comment and and ask any questions or give us suggestions it's starting to pour with rain now so I'm going to be off in a second but thank you ever so much folks take care and we'll be out for a wild camp probably this weekend somewhere and look out for that in the early part of next week cheerio bye-bye go on then Petra