Imagine the entire contents of your house in one big room – it’d be hard to find anything right? It’s the same for your larger bikepacking bags. Splitting your kit into sensible-sized ‘rooms’ makes perfect sense for keeping track of your belongings while touring, and in a race setting, it could save you a lot of cumulative time off the bike.
The new range of Tailfin Packing Cubes has been designed to simplify the packing process and to maximise the capacity inside Tailfin’s Rear Packs by incorporating clever shaping and a unique mix of materials.
We’re trying to avoid the dreaded ‘yard sale’ effect, where you need to empty the entire ‘house’ on the side of the road, to find one vital item. Verses a standard seatpack, the AeroPack and AP20 already have a big advantage in that they are top-opening, but this is at the expense of the real ‘stuffability’ you get with a seatpack – these Packing Cubes bring you the best of both worlds.
Tailfin-sized
Sized for optimising space in the AeroPack/AP20.
Finessed fabrics
bluesign® and OEKO-TEX® certified water-resistant fabrics.
Filled with features
Each pack has time-saving organisational features to make your ride smoother.
Weight Weenie or Organising Obsessor?
Whilst weight is often the key focus for those trying to decrease their overall time on weekend adventures or ultra-distance races, it’s usually not the best place to start. Knowing your kit inside out; where you keep certain items, knowing where they’ll be when you need them, is often a much better place to begin optimising your setup. In an ultra-distance race scenario such as the Transcontinental Race (TCR), one analysis concluded that anything weighing less than 1kg was worth taking if it saved you 3 minutes of stopped time per day*. The entire set of Packing Cubes weighs 153g and will help you find what you need quickly and easily – potentially saving you a lot of time.
Whether racing, touring across continents, or on a weekend bikepacking trip, we’ve included features to improve the bikepacking experience. The set fits inside the AeroPack or AP20 top bag, maximising the available space (which is difficult to do with dry bags or stuff sacks not designed with this specific shape in mind). We wanted to make the Cubes relatively light in colour, to bring a bit of light into the interior of an otherwise dark bag. Along with colour-coded zip pullers, which are different on each Cube size, this helps identify the different ‘rooms’ in your bag, leading you to the item you’re searching for.
*Source: The Actual Effect of Weight on Cycling Speed (2016), White, C. https://ridefar.info/bike/cycling-speed/weight/
Features
Each bag has slightly different features: the 6 L’s double-ended top zip allows access to anywhere along its interior space without taking it out of the AeroPack/AP20, whilst the 3.5 L’s stretch-mesh outer pocket is perfect for stashing a battery pack and cables for super fast access. The 5 internal pockets of the 2.5 L Cube are perfect for keeping track of those important but miniature items we all need to carry, and all of the Cubes feature a dual-material water and abrasion-resistant construction.
We’re not always bikepacking in the best of weather, so with this in mind we made the Packing Cubes easily accessible and closable when wearing gloves. The pull cord and release tab are eminently usable with gloves on, or with cold, tired hands lacking dexterity.
Fabric Fanatics
Each Packing Cube is made with a mono-filament ripstop fabric, which is lightweight, flexible, and water-resistant even after multiple washers. The lower part is specially formulated to have increased tear strength while providing great hydrolysis performance. You won’t need to worry about placing the Packing Cube on wet grass whilst camping, or a wet item of gear transferring its moisture to the rest of your kit.
Although we had the option to use materials such as Dyneema, which is ultra-light, it’s unlikely to stand up to years of bikepacking trips without developing holes or letting in water. We wanted to spec the fabric with the rigours of bikepacking in mind.
In order to truly understand the capabilities of the fabrics we’d chosen, we performed extensive trials with an external testing agency – this challenged our preconceptions and informed our fabric choices. Tailfin founder Nick described the process of achieving ‘waterproof after washing’ as “bloomin’ difficult and eye-opening, the fabrics and coatings we thought could be great weren’t necessarily great”.
The resulting Packing Cubes are the culmination of these efforts and are products we truly believe will enhance your bikepacking experience.
