Sea Kayak Bailout - Ditch Kit

Recently I have been trying to figure out exactly what I should put in my Bailout box. For those of you who are unsure of what that is, it is a box that you can grab if for some reason you should have to "Abandon Ship."

I found it really hard to find online anywhere ideas of what to take in such a limited sized box so I wanted to share the contents of mine and get ideas of what other people would carry.

Firstly I choose to use a Pelican 1150 case as my box as it is strong, water tight and has a handle that would allow me to clip my pig tail into it and swim without having to hold a box. I'm thinking if there is a reason that I have to leave my boat it is probably going to be rough conditions in a tricky area. This size box JUST fits behind the seat in my Valley Pintail. I went with yellow and to make it even more highly visible i put a learntokayak.ca reflective sticker on it!

So here is what I packed into it:

-Lighter
-Stormproof Matches
-Flint and Steel Set
-Fire starter sticks
-Stainless Steel Collapsible Stove (I picked this up from Mike Allen, he has a bunch of them made up and they are made of 5 shaped pieces of flat SS that connect together to make a box to burn twigs in and cook over! Brilliant!)
-Stainless Steel bowl for boiling or cooking in over stove
-Adventure Medical Kits Emergency Bivi Bag
-Water purification tablets
-Candles
-Glow Sticks
-Fishing Line and Tackle
-Chocolate!! (Hopefully I wont eat this before I need it!)
-Cord
-Typar House Wrap (Lightweight, small tarp)
-Signal Mirror
-Swiss Army Knife

I hope that this list will help someone else make their own bailout / ditch kit and would love to hear ideas from other people about what they have or would put in theirs.

Cheers.

Ditch Kit

Check out this site for more thoughts on a ditch kit. The author strongly recommends having the kit attached to one's person. There are some sobering stories in this article!

http://www.nessmuking.com/articles/equipment/paddling-emergency-kit/

Thanks for opening up this discussion James!

Lise