A few months back, I switched my stock HH lines out for cinch buckles and have come to the conclusion that they aren't going to work for me for a variety of reasons.
First, the stretch in the webbing is somewhat annoying during good weather, but last night I rode out a crazy N GA thunder storm with my SuperShelter HH and the stock "napkin" tarp which has never failed me--until last night. The stretch in the webbing made it impossible to mate up the tarp to the hammock ridgeline effectively. The tarp kept serperating from the Under Cover as the hammock sagged under my weight which opened enough of a hole between the UC and tarp to let in some rain. Let me tell you, 1:30am with water running down your back is no fun. Luckily the rain stopped, I had to pee and I have a bottom entry HH so I drained the hammock and some other stuff and kept going. I tried to run the suspension webbing through my snake skins to help snug the ends up but couldn't figure out how to do it effectively at zero-dark thirty.
Then around 3:00am I heard a twang and thud--I hit the ground with an audible "ooof". The webbing got sideways in the cinch buckles which caused the buckles to chew up the webbing. Interestingly, the webbing didn't totally fail, but rather the cinch buckles simply slipped. I re-hung the hammock and added a slippery half-hitch behind both buckles to keep going.
As it turns out, all the tent dwellers got flooded and my Tenderfoot came to get me at 3:30am. His headlamp looked like a huge flash of lightning in my eyes and we went to sort out his problems. He experienced Total Soaking (forgot to zip the fly) and we rode out the rest of the storm in the car.
The silver lining is that my wife was under my DIY silpoly tarp and was dry as a bone so I count that as a win.
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