Funny this topic should come up. I was canoeing with some friends last weekend when we flipped the canoe. We clambered ashore to dump the water out of the canoe. I had no reason to light a fire but I looked into my emergency kit just to check the contents. Lots of water in there. I pulled out the lighter and it wouldn't light fer nothin'.

It was raining and my fingers were wet. I had just gone for an impromptu swim in the river so every stitch of fabric I owned was dripping wet. Running the flint wheel with my finger or on my pant leg just put more water on the flint wheel and didn't do a thing to help it dry. I had some strike anywhere matches in a match safe that were good and dry. But, I didn't have anything dry to strike them on. I guess I could have peeled some bark off a dry stick to find a dry surface to strike a match.

I do alot of canoeing and I tried many times to keep things dry in a zip-loc baggy. Nuh-uh. They almost always leak - not always but almost. I'd never trust a zip-loc to keep something dry for very long.

Based on this experience I did some experimenting and I found that I can take a fire steel and a greasy cotton ball, soak them in water to the point of being completely, sopping-wet waterlogged and still get a flame going in just a minute or two.

A lighter is always part of my basic fire starting kit. But I will now be sure to also take along a sparker rod and some vaseline cottonballs for those times when everything is wet. I guess there's commercial tinders out there, too, that claim to be waterproof. I've never tried them. You can try to keep your lighter and tinder dry if you want to. But, I'll bet eventually water is going to get to it one way or another. I prefer to keep something on hand that doesn't fail no matter how wet it gets.