What do you need to know before going swimpacking.

Swimpacking in Dniester River near Dubosari town

Imagine an island or a beach that no roads or trails lead to. It is close enough that you can swim there but too far for a return in the same day. Or imagine a loop that links 3 lakes and a part of the ocean that you would like to swim but it 50 km and you cannot swim this much in one day. A potential solution for both scenarios is to pack everything you need for a normal overnight camping trip in a dry bag, tie it with a rope to yourself and swim on to your destination. You can read more about swimpacking in my previous blog.

Being a newborn sport, swimpacking suffers from technical and technological backwardness. I believe that it is not forever and that swimpacking will eventually get its own specialized equipment, enhanced style of swimming and navigation. In the meanwhile I want to discuss solutions to the challenges using existing gear and knowledge. 

• How to tie a dry bag to swimmer's body to allow for full freedom of motion;
• How to transport a dry bag on the land  

How to tie a dry bag to swimmer's body to allow for full freedom of motion

So far, I've tried a few ways of tying the bag to myself. To this date, I found the most convenient and possibly counter intuitive method is tying it to your legs:

• Tie a loop of nylon webbing with a ladder lock buckle to the rolled top of a dry bag
• Tie two ends of a single, 4 m rope to your ankles on a tightening knot to allow for tension adjustment, put the rope through the nylon loop. See the photo bellow: 

This setup provides the best comfort and freedom of limbs. Despite that your legs are literally tied together, since the rope is not attached to the bag with a knot, it freely slides through the nylon loop, making the kicks possible without disturbing the stability of the bag too much. The ropes allow for 2 kick stroke. Kicking is not ideal, but remember that in open water swimming, kicks are not so important as for short distance swimming. The buckle on nylon loop allows to release the bag if needed. One of the drawbacks of this setup is that the skin on the ankles becomes sore after a long day of bag towing, so a liner is needed for the ankle loops on the rope.

For smaller bags I used shoulder strap harness to attach them right above my waste.

In this setup I've attached the top of the bag on a 50 cm long rope and attached it to the shoulder strap harness behind my neck, so it looked like I'm wearing a backpack. During the swim the bag floated above my waste. Since the weight of the bag was about 4 kg it didn't sink deep enough to touch my but or legs or interfere with my stroke or kicking in any way. The advantage of this setup is that the bag is located inside of the fastest flowing current generated by the swimmer, so the load exerted on the swimmer is minimal. On other hand, bags that are heavier then ~4 kg will sink deeper and will cause serious discomfort for stroke, kicking and body positioning. Unfortunately, I have never managed to pack everything lighter then 6 kg for an overnight trip, so this setup only works for day trips in case you want to carry your clothes, food and water, but not camping gear. 

(Example of dry bag over the swimmer's waste) 

Another method is to tie a rope or a piece of nylon webbing around your waste and put the bag on a short rope. This method also provides good efficiency but suffers from the same problem as the shoulder straps design – heavier bags sink too deep and interferes with kicking. One option to prevent this is to put the bag on a longer rope so that the bag falls behind the legs. When I tried that, my legs were tangled in the rope making kicking absolutely impossible. Next thing I will try is to add a float to the rope right above the feet so that it wouldn't sink and my feet would have less chance of catching it. In theory, if this method works, it has the potential to be the most efficient and convenient method of towing because the legs will get more freedom, the kicking will be more efficient and the bag will be receiving less impulses that disturb its optimal position on the water. I will report the results of this experiment in the next article

How to transport a dry bag on the land 

A huge advantage of swimpacking is that after a swimming part of the route you can take your clothes and shoes on, get the dry bag behind the shoulders and move on to the next body of water or beach. This allows to form interesting and previously impossible routes. Carrying the dry bag in your hands, especially over a longer distance is a torture, don’t try it. Instead you can make a simple harness and wear it as a backpack.

The best option for carrying a drybag is to have shoulder strap harness sold for about CAD 30 in many outdoor stores like MEC in Canada or REI in US. The top of the harness that goes over the neck is attached to the top of the bag and the bottom straps of the harness, that usually have hooks, are attached to the bottom of the dry bag. Most drybags won’t have any attachment points at the bottom, so you will have to make one. I usually use nylon webbing with a buckle used in towing system, tightened around the drybag closer to the bottom end of the dry bag to make an attachment spot. Then  the bottom straps of the shoulder harness are hooked up to this attachment and you are ready to go!

Another, less comfortable method, is to use the towing rope as straps. Without untying any knots on the rope that was attached to your ankles during the swim, put the rope through the loop formed by a buckle on roll top of the bag and put the bottom end of the bag through both ankle loops of the rope and tighten up the loops at the bottom side of the bag. You have a backpack! Your shoulders will hurt a lot from the rope, so some padding for the shoulders could help. This setup is not useful for long distance hikes but is better than nothing. I used it during a 3 km portage between the beaches of the lake when I forgot my shoulder straps.

I hope that these tips can help some swimmers to make their first steps into the water with a dry bag behind them and bring new thoughts and experiences in open water swimming community.

In the next few articles I will be focusing on some of the questions that so far have very theoretical answers with very rudimentary practical support. I will tell about those theoretical thoughts and some anecdotal evidence that I have managed to collect during those few swimpacking trips. Here are a few topics:

• How to minimize the drag from the dry bag?
• How does the dry gab not sink or leak?
• How to adjust swimming technique with increased load and dis-balanced geometry due to the bag? 
• How to stay hydrated sated and 'navigated' on the water without support?
• How to avoid shoulder impingement due to increased load from the bag during multi day swimming?

As I said earlier, I believe that it will not take long before the body of knowledge about swimpacking expands enough so that these questions can be answered more convincingly and some of the ideas discussed in these articles will be reconsidered or debunked. Looking forward to those times!