One of my scavenger buddies came up with a handful of free “waterproof” fanny packs. They are oddly shaped little things with a dry bag style roll top and fastex buckle closure, made by SealPak.



I don’t care for fanny packs, and these have some design miscues in any case. It might make a semi-waterproof throw bag for sub-freezing days. I’m going to seat a grommet in the bottom, feed some line through, stuff it with rope and see what happens.

I put a circle of Tenacious Tape on the outside for added durability and melted a 3/8” grommet hole with a nail head. With the grommet seated on the hot melted nylon I put a bead of Plumber’s Goop around the perimeter to soften the transition between brass and nylon.



I had 35 feet of cheap 3/8” poly rope to play with, so I ran that through a scrap circle of minicel and gave it a throw.



Holy freaking moly that worked well. The slick waterproof lining releases the line cleanly. I hit the target so well on the first throw I had to reload and try it again. And again.

With the slick interior it reloads as fast and easily as any throw bag I own. And since my second throws have always been water-in-the-bag tosses it should do that nicely as well.

Dang, I may like this more than my usual shortie throw rope. It may turn out that I don’t need to dry my throw bag line after ever trip. I cut the stupid belt off to reduce the snagging hazard, which seemed to help even more with accuracy.

There is room for at least another 10 feet of 3/8” line in the bag. I need to get some good quality floating rope, and reshape that minicel circle to better fit the end of the bag.

I used one of those for my swim/wade/clamber exploration of the Chattooga Headwaters. It was mostly sorta waterproof, but small amounts siphoned through the roll top closure. Then I discovered Watershed......

(Edit: Oops, wrong post in wrong place)



It was free, and I would never use it as a fanny pack, so what the hell.

My original intent was to make it into a dedicated rope bag for clothesline, hanging food bag, center line and etc, with a grommet at one end and rope sticking through.

My thought was that I could just pull some excess rope out from the grommet, tie it off to a tree or throw it over a limb and pull the rest needed out of the bag as needed, and later re-stuff it just the same as with a throw bag.

I tried that and found that the rope tended to fall excessively out of the grommet hole end, so I passed the rope through a circle of minicel with a tight hole in the middle to help hold it in the bag unless pulled from that end.

At that point I had essentially made a throw bag anyway, so I decided to give it a toss or two and was impressed with how well it threw. That slick waterproof lining really helps the rope release cleanly.

I have come off a couple of winter trips where I took haystacks over the gunwales and found that my throw bag was a useless block of frozen rope (so were the painter lines – another reason to always keep some spare rope in the car).

I’d really like to have an unfrozen throw rope available, so a few years ago I made a similar “waterproof” throw bag from a small vinyl dry bag. It was bulkier and didn’t throw nearly as well; the stiff vinyl folds occluded the opening, especially when it was cold. The thin coated nylon on the fanny pack doesn’t seem to pose that problem.

I don’t especially like using my throw bags for other camp rope purposes, but while I’ve got the cheap poly rope in it I may try it in that guise as well. For either repurposed use the design would be the same.

I haven’t yet tried it sub freezing temperatures. At some point I’ll wet it down, freeze it and see how it throws when the outer bag and folds are frozen.

Does anyone manufacture a throw bag designed for sub-freezing temperatures?