It had to happen sooner or later. I was sitting by the lake with my friend when she said "What's that noise?". We looked up at the lake and saw a wall of water and heavy winds heading our way from about a mile away. There was just enough time for me to get into my Hennessy Hammock and she in the tent. The Hennessy hex tarp was guyed out with some hiking poles on the water side to afford me with a view, and boy, what a view I had, until the wind picked up the tarp and ripped out the side attachment rings on the windward side. Earlier, expecting some wind, I had tied plastic bags with a small (5#?) rock in each bag to the corners to hold the sides down and keep flapping to a minimum. Now, with the tarp free and the bags of rocks still attached to the corners, I hightailed it out of there to the tent and watched from the tent, as the hammock filled with water. I guess you could say I was lucky not to have been konked in the head with a bags of flying rocks. The tent did a bit better and keep most of our stuff dry, but not well enough to consider staying through the night for which more severe weather was forecast.
How often do you all encounter severe wind? What do you do to stay safe and dry in these conditions? Should I have lowered my tarp and hammock so the tarp was touching the ground on the windward side? It was sloping ground and it would have been hard to accomplish that without the hammock being on the ground. Maybe I should have lowered the tarp and tired to raise the hammock off the ground with the snake skins and sat under it all. I would have gotten soaked in the process, but may have saved my tarp from being damaged and my hammock and contents from getting soaked. Before the tarp let loose, the rain was blowing in the end of the tarp and soaking the hammock at the foot end. These were the only two trees I had a choice of in that area. It all happened so fast that I didn't do anything to help myself other than making a dash to what I though might be a decent shelter. It was a disaster. I estimate the winds to have been in the 30-40 mph range. Oh, yeah, thunder and lightning and bolts dropping into the water all around us made for an interesting 1/2 hour!
BTW, the Hennessy Hammock can hold a lot of water!
Suggestions?
-Nancy
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