> I liked a couple of aspects of Marcelo's tip. The flotation system can
> vary in size to accomodate gear. It has redundancy.

> A couple of concerns I have are: 1) The bottles need to be fastened in the
> boat so they don't float loose, and 2) they still allow a lot of water
> into a flooded boat, i.e., the bottles do not pack tightly inside a kayak.

While on a recent shopping trip trip at the 100 Yen Shop (equivalent to the N.American $1 shops) here in Japan, my three year old daughter led me to a bin of small plastic/rubber balls, about the size of tennis balls. I wondered if you couldn't take a bunch of these and contain them in a mesh net attached, as Paul suggests, with a rope and pulley or eye-hook setup.They might pack in there a bit better than the PET bottles. Obvious problem would be having to bribe the kids to get them back!

Kelly