bear resistant kayakers ice chestA few notes on how to turn a bear-resistant backpacker's food container into an ice chest. This would be a bit heavy for a backpack trip, but when kayaking you can afford more weight.
The De Anza Outdoor Club only uses Backpackers' Cache brand bear resistant food containers. For our trips, the club owns enough canisters for a small group, or for each in a large group to prepack their food/toiletries in advance to get an idea of whether they need to rent more.
 (Some bear resistant food containers have been invented made of Kevlar, fabric and/or fabric aluminum have been invented, but are not allowed at many parks. Check in advance to see which brands (usually of hard plastic models) are okay where you go.)
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Cut up an old thick foam sleeping pad to fit around the outside of a bear-resistant canister and duct tape it together.
 
This might be all you do, but we decided to make a cover from leftover upholstery fabric, including around a lid, which we made a velcro closure for:
Use a bread loaf sized pan to make a custom ice block or two. If you make more than one you can run water on them as needed to melt them to fit. If you make only one it will last longer.
 
The photo below shows a melted ice block at the end of a trip:
Yes, this would possibly allow a bear to grab it with his teeth and carry it off, but we have only used the insulating cover on kayak/canoe overnights to locations with a big bear locker to put it in.
When we travel by canoe/kayak to backountry sites with a designated big metal food storage locker for each site, we always bring at least one of the backpack sized containers so we can have snacks and/or one meal's worth of food at the beach. Then we can easily lock everything up if a swim or picture taking opportunity presents itself without having to carry everything back to the food storage locker.
 A few years after we made it, we thought to tack a (see the thin purple ribbon?) one and a half inch diameter fender washer to the inside of the lid cover so we would always have it very handy for lid opening.
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Improve your inexpensive rain gear is another camping sewing project.
Tips for fitting food into a bear resistant container: using a bear resistant food storage container
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