Every question, answered.

That's the whole design brief. Cupped, crowned boards give a narrow base nothing to stand on; the wide flexible footprint rides across the curve instead of perching on the high point, and the fins keep the can from rattling loose when a wake rolls through. Bump it off level and it settles back.

Floating docks are built to move — even the manufacturers call good stability 'controlled movement,' not stillness. This resists tipping and settles the drink back level as the float rocks. It's not a sealed lid, so pair it with a lidded tumbler if you want both layers on a busy wake day.

Measure the bottom, not the rim. A base 2 to 3 inches across fits — the 40 oz Stanley does. Handled mugs don't; the handle lands right where a fin needs to grip.

No. Nothing gets drilled into the decking, clamped to a rail, or mounted to a post. It sits on top of wood, composite, or aluminum, and it picks up in a second — whether that's a walk to the chair or dock-out in the fall.

It doesn't float — over the edge, it sinks like anything else that isn't built to. Soaking it on purpose is a different story: rinse off a summer of sunscreen and lake water and it's completely fine.

Yes — it works at least as well on a hard, flat surface. The wide footprint and the grip keep a bumped drink from sliding off a chair arm or a crowned dock box lid, which is worth having even where the boards aren't the problem.

Movement is the whole design brief. The base flexes with the float or the boards and settles the drink back level after a wake passes. It resists tipping — it's not magic, so a direct hard kick off the edge is still a direct hard kick — but a passing wake is exactly what it's built to shrug off.

Rinse it or run it through the dishwasher. It's one piece of flexible material with nothing to come apart or trap water inside.

It's called the Steadi, molded in small runs in Orange, California by Steadi Labs — veteran-founded and patent pending. Every order ships free from steadilabs.com, with 30 days to change your mind.

Enough to cover where the day actually happens, not one per chair. A typical dock lands two or three — one by the cooler, one at the bullnose where people actually sit with their feet in the water, one riding along for the boat-loading run — since nothing's bolted down, the same base moves from the chair arm to the dock box lid as the day moves. Add more for a dock that regularly hosts a full weekend crowd.

A little, yes. The fins are flexible, not rigid, so they'll seat bases as wide as about 3.15 inches with a firm push — snug rather than settled. The Stanley 30 oz Quencher (3.15 in) and the Owala FreeSip 24 oz (3.12 in) both land right at that edge. Past 3.15 inches the fins run out of stretch, and under 2 inches on the other end a base sits too loose to hold — there's still a floor as well as a ceiling, just a little more give at the top than the headline 2-to-3-inch range suggests.

Yes — a standard kids' water bottle sits well inside the 2-to-3-inch base range. On a dock those bottles get set down half-finished and rolled around by every hand that walks past, same as anything else out there. Round, light bottles are some of the easiest things to knock off a crowned board, so the grip matters as much for a kid's bottle as for the can next to it.

No. It's one piece of solid flexible material with no seams or hinges for sunscreen or bug spray to work into, so a season of it doesn't change how the fins grip. Rinse it off or run it through the dishwasher and it's back to normal — there's no fabric sleeve or foam liner underneath to hold onto residue the way a koozie does.

It's not part of the dock, so dock-out doesn't really involve it — pick it up along with the chairs and the cooler when the season wraps, the same way you'd pick it up now to move it from the cooler to the bullnose. There's no clamp or hardware left behind to unscrew, and nothing about it is built to double as a permanent fixture.

Alongside it, more likely. A floating holder is built for open water — it needs a tether or it drifts, and it tips in real chop — while this is built for the deck: the boards, the chair arm, the dock box lid, wherever the day is actually happening on top of the dock rather than in the lake. They're solving two different spots, not competing for the same one.

Temperature isn't really the variable — base width is. A travel mug or thermos without a handle sits the same as a sweating can does within the 2-to-3-inch range, hot coffee or cold seltzer. A handled travel mug is the one exception, and it's the handle that's the problem, not the heat — it sits exactly where a fin needs to grip.

It lands well for exactly that moment — the dock's back in the water, the chairs came down the hill, and the first cold drink of the season usually still has nowhere to go but bare boards. The dock colorway, Lake Moss and Deep Water among them, is built around that scene specifically, and it ships free like every order, made in Orange, California, with 30 days for it to earn a spot on the dock.