Now in dark blue & gray two-tone.
The AIRE Kayak Bag has just enough mesh along the top center between the lift handles to allow your kayak to dry somewhat, but none of this mesh is exposed in such a way that it will get torn by normal handling or by airport baggage systems. It measures 47" long by 15" around. In other words, it is cylinder shaped. This is a big bag that will carry most tandem boats except for a couple of the larger inflatable canoe style models, and a few of the very stiff, hard-to-roll models like the Rocky Mountain Animas II tandem. If your kayak is a solo or smaller tandem model you should also be able to stuff paddles, a small top-off pump, and possibly a lifejacket in there. The Kayak Bag has a long removable shoulder strap as well as two regular lift handles. Additionally, there are also two pockets on the inside, and two more on the outside.
The last feature of the Kayak Bag is a dubious pair of backpack straps on the bottom/rear side. These have a design flaw in that they connect to the bag's D-rings with plastic hooks, which can and do break. In fact, we have had customers break them on the very first use. If the backpack straps are a crucial feature for you, we would suggest trying to stuff your boat into a 3.8 River Pack (see our Dry storage page) instead. It will poke up out of the River Pack bag, but we have to assume anyone carrying their boat this way is hiking to a put-in, not carrying it to baggage check-in at an airport. If you do buy the Kayak Bag and the hooks break, understand that you have been warned and we will not take returns if this occurs. Even if the hooks didn't break so easily, the shoulder straps are not comfortable. Beyond the crabbing about this one detail, AIRE's Kayak Bag is a very nice product in every other way.
