Wet Hammock

[TeeDee]

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[blackbishop351]

I have the HH ULBA. As you probably know it is made of nylon taffeta.

Now nylon absorbs water.

Has anybody here any experience with a wet HH and how long it takes to air dry?

By wet I mean say it has been submerged in water for at least a few minutes. So it can be really soaked. I have the silnylon snake skins on the HH, but they would provide no protection against submerging.

My experience with nylon would lead me to believe that it would dry fairly rapidly if hung and spread out under a tarp, but that is extrapolating from experience with other nylon fabrics such as ripstop and not taffeta or the 70D taffeta used in the HH.

Any opinions or experiences??

No experience, but my hunch says that as breathable as the ULB is, it'd probably dry out pretty quickly. Adjusted for high humidity, of course.

[Just Jeff]

I left my uncovered BULA out in the thick Monterey fog a few times. One time I went out there and saw a puddle of water inside the hammock. Directly underneath the puddle, the underside of the hammock and the underquilt were completely dry. Leads me to believe that this material doesn't absorb water.

[blackbishop351]

blackbishop351 and Just Jeff - Thanks for the input. Your intuitions and experiences seem correct to me. If the hammock gets submerged rolled up in the snakeskins, the water probably wouldn't soak deeply and only the surfaces close to the skins would get wet. Of course that's assuming that it is submerged for only minutes and not hours.

I think if your hammock was submerged for hours you'd have more problems than a wet shelter

[slowhike]

i believe there have been times when hikers spent all day hiking in the rain & when they opened their pack, found that water had collected inside the bottom of the pack (or inside the bottom of the pack liner), or inside a stuff sack that was supposed to be water proof.
so it was basically the same as their stuff being submerged for hours.
the article from "jim wood's base camp" that headchange gave in the "S to S" thread is a good article to read about "keeping your critical gear dry".
also, if you're a member w/ backpackinglight.com, they recently put several of the most popular dry bags to the test & gave a pretty lengthily report on that.

[Coffee]

If it helps. When I was using my HH with my nest and snake skins I would wrap my nest inside my HH, and then put that in my snake skins. I think it gave me one more layer of waterproofing for my nest without adding anything to my system.

This just shows how weird I am about getting things wet.

[slowhike]

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This just shows how weird I am about getting things wet.

that's a pretty important thing to be thinking about when you're out on the trail.

[blackbishop351]

Critical items like dry underwear and socks and spare pants and shirt and quilts, I keep in the above linked plastic zip lock bags. I have kept the above items and Polargard 3D quilts compressed in these for at least 6 months with no air leakage into the bags whatsoever.

You keep your quilts compressed all the time? Haven't they lost a lot of loft??

I know that para cord absorbs water, but also dries quickly.

In my experience paracord takes forever to dry out.

I think you're dead on with the hammock, though - I think mine would dry out quicker than just about anything else I have in my pack.