Finding yourself one seat bungee short every time you de-rig, or maybe just tired of spending the whole regatta picking stray bungees up off the ground around the trailer? We have a hack for that, which is pretty fitting, since the seat bungee is itself a pretty sweet hack.

That's right, by the way: bungeeing the seat is not the way it was always done. Someone once spotted those bungees in a Home Depot or the like and, wham-o, we all use them now. And why not? Pretty much everything we use in rowing these days--even these fancy carbon-fiber boats--started out as a hack of some sort. The pre-seat bungee era, which rowers of a certain vintage can remember, involved removing and milk-crating the seats before traveling. One of these days, we'll track down the original seat bungee hacker for you (and we are betting it was someone who was running short of milk crates) but for now let's stick with this hack for that hack: a simple little tool folks call the Spirit Stick.

Talk about dead simple: all you need is a length of PVC pipe about 8 inches long--just long enough to hold all eight of your bungees, taut and at the ready, in a full set when they are not doing their duty up in the shell. A little bit of tape or a sharpie can customize the stick by squad or boat, and it can get bundled right with the riggers so it is handy on the other end of your trip. An extra bonus, if you are one of those enlightened programs that has ditched the rigger wrap and electrical tape to go all-bungee when bundling the riggers, is that you can wrap the rigger bungees right around this PVC hold-all, too, making it a one-stop shop for all your stretchy, hold-stuff-together needs.

Incidentally, the Spirit Stick hack also passes one of our other tests for "good hack" status: we've seen the idea, um, borrowed by a few programs over the years--proving once again that the best hacks pretty much propagate themselves.

Got a great way to corral your travel items? Share your tips--and hacks--in the comments below.

Have a great rowing hack to suggest for future inclusion here? Send it to us!