Deck Mate Deck Bag

Follow-up on my first review of this product. My old Deck Mate bag lasted about 3 years and 30 trips and the only negative is the zipper. It self-destructed and now I use the bag just for small gear storage in the garage. I purchased another Deck Mate and the zipper construction hasn't changed. I was pretty hard on the first, so am being gentle with this one.

The other day I went into one of our local sporting goods stores searching for foot wear to wear while kayaking and ending walking out with a Seattle Sports Deck Mate deck bag. I have long searched for the perfect deck bag for my kayak and slowly but surely I have come to realize that there is no one bag that can do it all. But for a general purpose semi-dry deck bag the Deck Mate seems to do a pretty good job.

At around $29.95 it seems reasonable priced. The Deck Mate comes in two colors (blue or yellow) although the yellow colored bag is not very common, most of the sites on the internet sell only the blue colored bag.

One of the problems I have had in the past with other bags was the method by which you attach the deck bag to the deck. With the Deck Mate it couldn’t be simpler. Just attached the four combo bungee/hooks and it becomes simple and quick to attach or remove. I have used this bag while practicing rolling and sculling and have yet to shake it loose.

Construction of the Deck Mate is pretty straight forward with radio frequency welded seams, an internal plastic stiffener and a Hydrokiss zipper. What this boils down to is that there is very little to go wrong with such a bag, yet at the same time it means there are few good places for lashing down gear to. I’ve used this bag for a few weeks now and find its size and shape to be very good for what I like to carry on the deck of my kayak.

This type of semi-dry bag would be good for those of you who want to keep waves, rain and sun off your gear. For those of you who want to soak test it a little more aggressively then you may want to go with a full dry type deck bag.

I have found that after practicing rolling and doing different rescues that enough water had leaked into the bag to actually make my kayak somewhat unstable. To fix this problem I installed two 8 mm metal grommets on each side at the lowest part of the deck bag to drain the water out. So far it’s worked great, no more water in the bag.

The only other problem I’ve had was to have the plastic on the pull string that is attached to the zipper come off a few times. Its easy enough to fix by just putting it back on, but if it happens again then I’am going to cut them both off and replace them with something else.

Time will tell, but in all it’s not a bad bag. I would add a few more lashing points and maybe a few more color choices but for those of you looking for a general purpose semi-dry deck bag at an affordable price then the Seattle Sports Deck Mate might just fit the bill.