Right! And a good crew NEVER lets a sail flap in the wind!
I have a lot of trail miles on my HG DCF tarp. I don’t use a continuous ridgeline, mine is guyed out from the peak corners. And I make sure it’s taut. The corners are staked out with just enough shock cord to prevent buffeting winds from pulling stakes out. It’s a taut pitch that doesn’t flap around in the wind.
But probably most important was what Adam, HGs owner told me.
“Hammock camping is tarp camping.”
To be successful, one needs to be in tune with the weather enough to know when storms are coming, and what the winds are going to do over the course of the night. Then select a campsite protected from the weather, and select trees that will place that tarp in the best orientation to wind and rain.
Maybe someday I’ll experience a failure of some sort. But I’m not gonna blame the material, or the construction. In the meantime, I’ll inspect all the corners to be sure there’s no obvious delamination.
If it ever does fail, I’ll call Adam and get another one just like the one I own, and transfer all the same guy lines to it ...
Going from a continuous to split ridgeline was attractive years ago because the it was easy to make a tarp taut, especially with hardware. Was trying to emulate my old Hexamid Solo Plus tent setup (pitch it taut). Then I read an overly tightened ridgeline could shorten the life of DCF.
A split ridgeline using a flyz is still a part of my setup with one big difference; the tarp is never tensioned tightly and tie outs are set using Blake hitches. This gives the best of both worlds, a super easy setup and some give to the system.
To be successful, one needs to be in tune with the weather enough to know when storms are coming, and what the winds are going to do over the course of the night. Then select a campsite protected from the weather, and select trees that will place that tarp in the best orientation to wind and rain.
LDog brings up a great point. Campsite selection prevents a lot of problems. It is so easy to select the first acceptable tree choice after a long day.
This past weekend I switched back to a CRL on the HG Standard w/ doors.
I can see the benefit of being able to ease some slack along the ridge seam.
I used a simple diamond knot through an eye at one end and a equally simple toggle at the other. The negative I can see is that the toggle end eats up some length in creating the V and could be detrimental in a short hang. Not sure if some other form of bling would be different. With my split RLs and mini ucrs I can snug the ucr right up against the tree if needed so I have an extra few inches of RL to play with when/if trees are close.
Yes, my pack weighs 70lbs, but it's all light weight gear....
Bob's brother-in-law
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