My wife and I are beginner paddlers. She has a Dagger Zydeco. It has a foam block down the center of the bow and stern that I presume are for flotation and deck support. I bought her a set of split bow and split stern flotation bags for the boat just in case she capsizes. When looking at the bags, there are slits in each corner that I presume are there to secure the bag to the boat with a strap of some sort. However, inside the boat there is nothing to secure the bags too. How would you suggest we go about this? Or do they even need to be secured…What I mean is, if they are fully inflated, will they take up enough room and fill the void so that in the event of a capsize they will hold themselves in place? Thanks for your help.
Foot Pegs?
In my rec boat I managed to tie my bow float bag to the ends of the rails for my foot pegs. My boat is 13.5 feet and it was a painful procedure because I could barely reach but it did secure it nicely.
securing bags
You do want to secure the bags to the boat somehow, otherwise they’re likely to just squirt right out of place in a capsize. Couple ideas:
Cut a couple of short pieces of 1/2 inch PVC plumbing pipe the same length as your foam pillars are wide. Shove one through the pillar at each end of the boat (and remvoe the resulting ‘core sample’ of foam from inside the pipe). Try to line them up with where the airbag stops (but don’t put them less than an inch from the end of the pillar). Now you can tie a cord to an airbag on each side, with the cord running through the foam wall. The PVC pipe protects the foam from getting cut/ground away by the cord.
Another possibility - pick up a couple of vinyl D-ring patches from a canoe store and use Weldwood (in the red can) contact cement to glue them in the approprite spots on the hull. They’ll eventually pull loose, since nothing sticks permanently to kayak plastic, but should hold well enough to keep airbags in place for quite some time.
if you’ve a newer model
that has rigging on the fore an aft decs (bungies) you could replace the bolts w/longer ones so you could then attach strap eye’s or similar rigging fittings to tie the bags in . Harmony makes a # of rigging assesories or go to marine supply store . I doubt the aft bag would come out the way the seatback is . at least in the 02-03 model I have . I did the eye strap thing on the outside and inside -so the bow bag is tied in and I now have declines foreward the cockpit …Hope that helps -M