Shoal Tent Suggests Pitching Your Tent on Water for the Night

SmithFly is an Ohio-based fishing gear company, so presumably, they came up with the idea for this floating tent by thinking of ways to help fishers get to that good spot earliest in the morning. Why rush to it when you could sleep the night there and just start fishing as you wake up?

Meet Shoal Tent. It’s a tent that doubles as an inflatable raft, which can sleep several adults in extreme comfort and several layers of unseen danger. It can serve either as an anchored or floating bedroom, to be used on lagoons, small or man-made lakes, ponds, creeks and river beds. So no, you won’t be accidentally drifting into shark-infested ocean waters as you snooze, but that’s not to say the idea is not without risks.

First things first: SmithFly says that the surface of our planet is 70 percent water and, on this reasoning, you’d have an easier time sleeping on the water than pitching your tent on the ground. “The world is your waterbed,” a note on the official website reads. “Sleep under the stars, on the water, feel the flow and let it lull you to sleep.”

Shoal Tent is the first product of this kind in the world, the description further reads, which is not exactly true. But it is the most popular so far, though it’s also been intensely ridiculed since it was launched in 2017.

The structure is actually a raft with a tent topper, and it’s entirely inflatable, which means it’s light to carry around (compared to traditional tents), smaller in size, and very easy to set up. Rolled up, it fits into a storage bag and weighs only 75 kg (165 pounds). The kit includes air pump and user manual, so installation is as seamless as possible.

There are no tent poles, no screws, and no chords to be tied down or otherwise in need of being secured. The raft body has three air chambers: one in the structure and two in the lower tube. Over this, you spread the actual tent to create a space that is large enough to accommodate about four adults and high enough to even stand in.

The floor is a 6-inch (15.2-cm) thick, drop-stitched, high-pressure floor similar to a paddleboard, which also acts as your very comfy air mattress. This and the soothing waters should provide you with the most relaxing sleep of your life. Assuming you don’t fear some unforeseen accident, roll over your pocket knife, or need to go number one in the dead of night.

The tent topper has one access point, one window, and is attached to the raft with heavy-duty hooks and loops. It’s waterproof, fabric sealed with PVC coating and includes heavy-duty zippers, and while it offers protection from the elements, it’s durable in high winds but easy to get out of “if the need arises.”

And this brings us to the risks that such a proposal entails: spending the night on a body of water. Even assuming you use Shoal Tent on the watery surfaces it was designed for (so no taking it to the Niagara Falls or mountain rivers), the idea of floating away from your campsite while sleeping goes against everything camping stands for. You’d be literally going to sleep at point A and waking up anywhere from B to Z, with little way of figuring out which it is.

Assuming you anchor the thing, you’d still be laughing in the general direction of common sense. Roll over onto your pocket knife, and you and your mates would be trapped under all that waterproof, high-quality material in the darkest of hours, with panic making it impossible to find the door or window. Somehow, needing to relieve yourself at night seems like the smallest of the inconveniences you’d face.

These concerns aside, Shoal Tent has been proving a hit as much as it’s been drawing criticism. Since launch, its price got bumped from $1,499 to $1,999, and SmithFly is delivering on backorders. There’s definitely a market for floating palaces like this one.