What to do with your phone on a kayak

The short answer

Buy the Pelican Marine pouch. It publishes IP68 and a real test — 3.3 ft for 30 minutes — and it has air cushions in it, so a dropped phone floats instead of going to the bottom. That one property is worth the price difference over a basic pouch by itself.

If money is the point, the JOTO two-pack does the waterproofing for under ten dollars. It publishes IPX8, which is the immersion rating rather than the splash one. It makes no floating claim, so clip the lanyard to something that does not sink.

If you need to see the screen while you paddle — a chart, a track log, a fish finder app — a pouch on a lanyard will not do it. That is the YakAttack RotoGrip: a track-mounted holder with the harness and tether in the box.

Three different problems, and people buy for the wrong one

Almost every bad phone decision on a kayak comes from treating this as one problem. It is three, and the right kit depends on which one you actually have.

• Water. Spray, a wave over the deck, a swim. Solved by a pouch or a waterproof case, and only by those.
• Loss. The phone leaves your hand and goes over the side. Solved by a tether or by buoyancy — not by waterproofing, which just means you own a dry phone at the bottom of a lake.
• Visibility. You need to read it while moving. Solved by a mount, which is the one answer that makes the first two problems worse rather than better.

A pouch answers water and nothing else. A tether answers loss and nothing else. They are cheap enough that most people on a used boat should own both, and that combination costs less than the mount.

How we judged these

Four criteria, published on how we pick:

• Published water protection. An actual IP rating, and ideally a depth and a duration rather than a bare code.
• Retention. Does it float, does it tether, or does it do neither?
• Usability. Whether the phone still works — touchscreen, camera, and getting it out when wet.
• Value against the phone it protects. The whole category is cheap next to the thing in it, which is worth remembering before economizing.

IP ratings, decoded properly

This is where the category hides, and it is not complicated once you know what the second digit means.

The number after the IP or IPX is the water digit. 6 means protection against powerful jets — rain, spray, a wave over the deck — and it is not an immersion rating. 7 and 8 are immersion ratings, and 8 means deeper or longer than 7 under conditions the maker specifies.

That distinction is the whole purchase. A dry bag rated IPX6 keeps a phone dry in the rain and will not survive the boat going over, which is why we say the same thing on the dry bag roundup. The pouches on this page publish IPX8 and IP68, which is the right side of that line.

Pelican goes further than the code and publishes the test: 3.3 ft of water for 30 minutes. That is the most useful spec in this entire category, because it tells you what the rating was actually earned against.

The thing almost nobody checks: does it float?

A phone in a sealed pouch is a dense object in a thin plastic bag. Unless the pouch has air or foam built into it, the whole assembly sinks, and it sinks fast.

So the honest ranking of outcomes when a phone goes over the side is: floats and waterproof, best; tethered to you, nearly as good; waterproof and sinking, you have a working phone you will never see again; neither, you have lost it and it is broken.

Pelican publishes built-in air cushions and states the pouch will not stay submerged. The cheaper pouches here publish no buoyancy claim at all, which is not a flaw as long as you treat them accordingly — a lanyard round your neck, under the PFD, or clipped to a deck line.

Hi-vis yellow is the other reason the Pelican is the pick. A black pouch floating in dark water in low light is, functionally, gone.

Published figures, side by side

Two rows decide it. The floating row is why the Pelican is first. The phone-size row is why the Rynapac exists at all: a large phone in a case exceeds the 7 inches the standard pouch publishes, and a pouch stretched to its limit is a pouch that leaks.

Measure your phone before you order

Seven inches sounds generous and is not. Measure the phone diagonally, in the case you actually use, because the case is part of what has to go in the bag.

A current large-format phone in a protective case is routinely over seven inches. If yours is, buy the 10-inch pouch and accept the slack. If yours is comfortably under, buy the smaller one — it seals better precisely because there is less of it to seal.

Either way, test the pouch before it matters. Close it empty, hold it under water in a sink, and squeeze. Any bubble means a bad seal and a pouch that goes in the bin, not on the boat.

The mount question

A mount is the only answer if the phone is doing a job that needs looking at: navigation on open water, a GPS track, or a sonar app paired to a castable unit.

Two honest caveats before buying one. First, a mount is not waterproof and does not pretend to be — it holds a phone out in the open, so either the weather is good or the phone is in its own waterproof case. Second, a phone on a ball mount with no tether is a phone in the water. YakAttack includes a harness and tether and tells you to use them, which is the correct instruction.

The published fit range is worth checking against your phone: 2.75 to 3.625 inches wide and 0.303 to 0.625 inches thick. A large phone in a thick case is outside that.

Where the mount goes, and the hole question

The RotoGrip arrives with a 1-inch Screwball track mount, which means it drops straight into a gear track without drilling anything — if the boat has a track.

Plenty of used hulls do not. Adding one is a small job and a cheap part, and we cover which track accepts what on the gear track roundup. If you would rather not drill a used boat at all, that page covers the no-drill routes too.

On placement: put it where you can read it without taking your eyes far off the water, and not where a paddle shaft sweeps. Most people end up just inboard of the left or right thigh rather than dead center, because dead center is exactly where a paddle drip lands. The same fitting that holds a phone usually holds a drink holder, so think about both before you commit to a spot.

The tether is the cheapest thing here

Phones are rarely drowned on a kayak. They are dropped — while being held, over the side, in about half a second.

A tether is a silicone sleeve around the phone, a ring, and a carabiner that clips to a PFD or a deck line. It works with a phone you already own in whatever case it is in, and it keeps working whether you also use a pouch, a mount, or neither. For the money it is the highest-value item on this page.

What it does not do is anything about water. A tethered phone that goes in still goes in; it just comes back. Pair it with the pouch rather than choosing between them.

The thing a phone is not

Worth stating plainly, because the whole category encourages the opposite belief: a phone is not a safety plan.

It is a reasonable emergency call from inshore water with coverage, and it is useless with a flat battery, in a dead spot, or in the water you just swam in. The required and recommended kit — a sound signal, a light after dark, a means of self-rescue — is not optional because you have a phone, and it is on the kayak safety kit checklist.

The practical version of that: put the phone in the PFD pocket, not in the hatch. A phone sealed in a dry bag inside a locked compartment is a phone you cannot reach in the one situation where you need it, which is in the water next to an upturned boat.

Battery, cold and sun

Three things that go wrong on the water and have nothing to do with water.

Cold kills charge. A phone that reads 60 percent at the launch can read 20 on a cold morning two hours later. If the phone is your navigation, start the day full and keep it against your body rather than out on deck.

Sun kills screens. A phone in direct sun on a bright deck is close to unreadable at the brightness a battery can sustain, which is the same problem fish finder screens have. A mount you can angle out of the glare is worth more than a brighter phone.

Heat shuts phones down. A sealed pouch on a black deck in summer is an oven, and a phone that overheats stops working until it cools. If it is hot, the phone wants shade, not the deck.

Who each of these is for

One pouch for everything: the Pelican Marine. IP68, published to 1 m for 30 minutes, floats, hi-vis. The pick.

Cheapest thing that genuinely works: the JOTO two-pack. IPX8, two in a pack so you have a spare, lanyard included. Assume it sinks.

A big phone: the Rynapac. Published to 10 inches, which is the size the standard pouch misses.

A screen you need to read while paddling: the YakAttack RotoGrip. Track-mounted, harness and tether in the box, published fit range.

Whatever else you buy: the Rogue Fishing tether. It solves the failure that actually happens.

What we would buy

A floating pouch and a tether. That is around forty dollars, it covers both of the failures that actually lose phones, and it needs nothing fitted to the boat — which on a used hull you have not finished rigging yet is the point.

Add the mount only when the phone has a job that needs reading. If it is just a camera and a phone, a pouch in a PFD pocket is the better answer and costs a quarter as much.