Review on Inflatable Boat Storage And Carrying Bag - Essential Boat Accessory by Kevin Carr

The good: the basic material of the wrap is fine. Even edge stitching here is ok.The bad:1. If your inflatable is not HUGE this is way too big. I have an 8.5 foot zodiac, hard floor panels. There is no way to tighten the straps around smaller volumes, due to absolutely terrible design choices with d-ring placements and strap lengths.2. The stitching that holds straps to the wrap material is for an cheap Walmart elementary school backpack. So is the strap material. Strap material is not a deal breaker, because it is still strong enough to tighten and lift a lot of weight. But the sewing! First lift you can hear it tearing away, and that's with my smaller 60 pound boat in there. A closer look and it's just kind of unbelieveable that they don't just take an extra 5 minutes and $1 worth of decent thread and sew the straps and the d-rings on properly. If you are the manufacturer and are reading this - 95% of us will pay an extra $5 if you put an extra $2 into heavy duty sewing of strap and d-rings. What's the point of making this if it's just going to rip?3. the straps are placed wrong. Any decent stuff sack has the straps sewn on well back from the edge so that you can get a good long pull and get some compression. Perhaps the manufacturer did zero basic design research?The fixable: I got out my wife's sewing machine. I reinforced the stitching on the straps and the d rings. That's a big help, but my machine can't do industrial thread or fabric, but at least it wont immediately tear off. Next, I used the button hole setting to make three slits for the strap to pass through so they can go all the way around and then pull the d rings on the ends nice and tight. Took a hour to figure out the machine, and an hour to sew. If you are the manufacturer, I hope you read this and make these small adjustments, because these after market storage bags are needed, they just have to be basically designed for pulling tight and getting a bit of compression, not a big floppy mis-fitting mess.Bottom line: You can't lift 50-100 pounds with sewing rated for 20 lbs. You can't tighten a bag with the straps and d-rings sewn at the edges.