How do you carry your camera on the boat?

On my last trip to Belize I ttried something new. Instead of carrying my entire kit on the boat and setting everything up there, I set the whole rig up in my hotel room and wrapped it up in a towel for the boat.

This worked well because there really was no room to be assembling strobe arms etc on the crowded, soggy boat. The only table on the boat was quickly filled up with towels and clothing from all the passengers. I staked out a small spot in the corner to protect my camera with a thick padded towel. The towel came in handy too when at the end of a long cold rainy blue hole trip--I had a dry towel.

I think the problem would be even bigger with a dSLR setup. I'm thinking maybe the best thing is to do the same. Setup at home and shoot WA one day both dives and macro the next both dives. That way you don't bring anything but the fully setup camera.

Thoughts?

That's the ticket. That should work well for Cozumel, belize, etc - places with small day boats. Assemble everything in an AIR CONDITIONED room and keep it shut up tight. If you open the housing on the boat, some moist air will get in and you can get a fogged up lens port.

Some folks also say they use the "flexible" padded coolers to store their gear whilst on the boat and I think that's a great idea. You can even keep the flexible cooler filled up w/ water if you want to keep salt crystals from forming in the buttons, etc if your boat doesn't have a FW rinse tank.

This topic has been reviewed before so do a search on the other forums. This really belongs in the Tips forum.

HTH

James