Today's a nice day, and I finished sewing loops in my tree huggers last night, so I did some test hanging.
I'm happy to report everything went off without a hitch. I hung the hammock from my newly built pergola. It uses 6x6 posts, and the short side is about 14' wide. I figured doing it in a controlled setting like this would go off a bit easier than trying to find the right two trees in the woods at the back of the yard for a test hang.
I'm using a whoopie sling/tree hugger setup with a couple of SMC rings, too.
Here's the basic setup:
Tree huggers with a marlinspike hitch. Toggles are pieces of a fiberglass reflector pole from Lowes. Also, whoopies.
Whoopies then attach to SMC rings.
Also attached to the rings would be the structural ridgeline, hammock, and drip lines.
Tarp suspension.
Nothing special here yet. Guide Gear 12x12 tarp, continuous cord and tarp attached to the cord with prussiks and micro biners.
The hammock sag when hanging from these posts is about perfect, so I set my ridgeline length for this distance. I have plenty of length on all my suspension bits to hang between trees farther apart than this. In fact, my whoopies are cinched ALL THEY WAY down
The fiberglass rod bits seem to work well for toggles. I got some splintering when I made one cut, however, and I dipped those ends in plasti-dip to prevent the rod from splintering me later on. But I like the bright orange so I can see 'em if they fall into the duff on the ground.
The GG tarp is too big to hang on the diagonal here, however, so I couldn't test it out completely. I found that I could set it up in a sort of 'porch mode' being that there's no tie-outs in the middles of the sides. I still didn't have quite enough room to stretch the tarp out like that due to the pergola's structure. At least it can still be done. Looks like the MSR Groundhog stakes only do any good in the local soil if I push 'em in as deep as possible. The loose sand just moves around too much. I'd really rather not use bigger stakes unless I have to.
I find the ENO doublenest quite comfortable. I could totally sleep in it very easily. I think I'm going to like the hammock thing.
Unfortunately, html no workie here. I will only upload my photos once, so you can see 'em here: http://thegpsgeek.com/blog/archives/182
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