Making a short GE hammock feel longer?

[raftingtigger]

I'm a full-time hammock sleeper and my nightly is an almost 13' GE hammock. I've never been able to get comfortable all night in bridge hammocks, and I have tried several styles. I can be very comfortable in an original WWBB (10.5' IIRC).

I've put a choked-up GE hammock in my Chrysler T&C minivan for quick stealth camping (overnighting in town on scuba diving trips). It barely works. I have it suspended from the driver's side lift gate hinge to the bolt in the passenger side grab handle. IF I could get the passenger seat out of the way most of my issues would go away. I however don't want to remove the seat.

I'm setting up the minivan for a couple of trips with my (non-hammocking) husband and I want room for him to sleep in the vehicle also. He can the way I've been doing it if he is at floor level, but it leaves no room for our gear. So...

I'd like to find a way, using more than 2 anchors, to make the short hammock feel longer. What I'm experimenting with right now is:

1. Spreading out the head gather so it goes over/around the passenger seat. I keep it spread out with some sort of spreader bar. Currently that is a scrap piece of wood. The head is anchored to the passenger side handgrip BOLT with 2 whoopie slings. That way I can adjust each side of the harness.

2. The foot end has 2 obvious hard points for suspension. The drivers and passengers side lift gate hinges. What I'm contemplating is sewing on suspension loops with webbing to the side hems of the hammock and using both hard points as foot anchors. I'm not heavy (<150# with all gear) so I don't think I'll rip the fabric. If I do, oh well - not the only hammock in my closet.

If this works, then I can build a driver's side platform for my husband's pad and sleeping bag. Gear can go under the platform.

Another tack would be to purpose build a cross between a gathered end and bridge hammock with webbing on each hem from head to tail and putting standard bridge hammock hardware on the head end. No need to put such hardware on the foot end and the car structure acts as the spreader bar.

What I'm not sure about is how well this will simulate a longer GE hammock. Ideas? Suggestions? Anyone already solved this?

[Watertooner]

Option 1 feels like it has a chance to be successful. Have you considered making a prototype with a sacrificial hammock or are you hoping to catch lightning in a hammock on the first try - to save time and effort?

[goobie]

With any luck gargoyle will see this. I saw his setup in a minivan years ago and he said it worked great.

Have you tried going wider with a shorter hammock? I made, rather crudely, a 10' cat cut hexon wide hammock years back. Full width of the fabric and just as comfortable as my usual 11 footers.

[LowTech]

Is it not possible to turn your hammock around so that the head end is in the rear of the rig and using the two points of attachment?

"Sent w/o me knowing"

[raftingtigger]

Is it not possible to turn your hammock around so that the head end is in the rear of the rig and using the two points of attachment?

"Sent w/o me knowing"

I thought about that but that would have my head substantially higher than my feet.

I tried the 4 point suspension, but unless there is tension on the entire ends of the fabric it doesn't hang right.

Good news is that simply switching from a foot right lay to a foot left lay solves all the problems. My body ends up mostly on the passenger side, body axis is in line with the vehicle, and best of all it feels longer this way. Why? IDK but I'm not going to quibble with success.

[gargoyle]

Tigger.
You got pics?
What I did in my Honda Odyssey was strip out the two bucket seats and the big rear bench. Hooked up very short soft shackles to rear driver side lift gate hinge. In the front, I did a short shackle to the seatbelt bracket on passenger side. Custom made a hammock to fit in that space. Made it just right so I had good sag and quilt did not bottom out on the floor. Basically the hammock ended right at the roof line, maybe a 1/2”of shackle was exposed. Larkshead shackles to hammock then to anchor points. I said custom
For nighttime use I pushed/tilted the passenger seat forward. I had curtains and skeeter net for doors and windows. A small DC fan that I ran on hot nights.

With the bench seat out, there was a nice cavern left empty where the bench seat was supposed to stow away into. I pulled some measurements and headed down to the local big box store (Menards, fwiw) and bought sturdy totes for my gear and tools. I think I had three bins plus a tool box and fire extinguisher in the space. My totes ended up being almost floor height. With a ccf pad on top of bins it comfortably held my feet, if I slept on the floor. There was enough room. Granted I didn’t have scuba equipment…?

My hammock was a wider material, 64” iirc. And length was ~108”. No fancy rip stop. Just a sturdy cotton/poly rem from Walmart fabric bin. 8 years of exposure and almost nightly use. Still have the hammock. Van is long gone.

Sorry, I don’t have pics.

[raftingtigger]

Tigger.
You got pics?
What I did in my Honda Odyssey was strip out the two bucket seats and the big rear bench. Hooked up very short soft shackles to rear driver side lift gate hinge. In the front, I did a short shackle to the seatbelt bracket on passenger side. Custom made a hammock to fit in that space. Made it just right so I had good sag and quilt did not bottom out on the floor. Basically the hammock ended right at the roof line, maybe a 1/2”of shackle was exposed. Larkshead shackles to hammock then to anchor points. I said custom
For nighttime use I pushed/tilted the passenger seat forward. I had curtains and skeeter net for doors and windows. A small DC fan that I ran on hot nights.

With the bench seat out, there was a nice cavern left empty where the bench seat was supposed to stow away into. I pulled some measurements and headed down to the local big box store (Menards, fwiw) and bought sturdy totes for my gear and tools. I think I had three bins plus a tool box and fire extinguisher in the space. My totes ended up being almost floor height. With a ccf pad on top of bins it comfortably held my feet, if I slept on the floor. There was enough room. Granted I didn’t have scuba equipment…?

My hammock was a wider material, 64” iirc. And length was ~108”. No fancy rip stop. Just a sturdy cotton/poly rem from Walmart fabric bin. 8 years of exposure and almost nightly use. Still have the hammock. Van is long gone.

Sorry, I don’t have pics.

Here are some pics. The plastic box is where I want a 20" wide platform for my husband's sleeping bag. I also plan on removing at least some of the stow n' go seats to use their compartments as storage space.

[gargoyle]

Looks similar to what I had going on. I did those custom soft shackles so I wouldn’t lose “suspension “ space.
My front anchor was on the B-pillar. That’d be the passengers right ear.
Those stow and go seats can be a bugger to remove.

[gargoyle]

https://www.highwayhammocks.com/

Might offer you some ideas as far as a bridge style?

[nanok]

hey there,

i did work on the same concept in my head, and i think i solved it, but never got around to actually testing it. if my simulation engine is right, then you're really close to it too. my initial intent was to be able to hang sideways inside a van (instead of length wise), to save some space, but it can be addapted to other uses too.

i don't have pics, but you're the raftingtigger, so i'll just try to talk you through, you'll probably get it easily.

the hammock length is some significant percentage unused for sleeping, often more than 20% i'd say, a lot of the length is needed to provide a shallow angle to the fabric spread, this is what makes the hammock "feel long" (and is also why extra width doesn't hep). so then it means that the parts of the hammock which we don't lie on, at each attachement point, don't have to be inline with the "bed of the hammock", they just need to be allowed to spread freely. therefore, one could bend the hammock at those points, around an object which is wide enough to support the width that far from the anchor point, and thus move the gathered end (and final anchor) towards the ground. in other words, the hammock will look more like an "M" while in use, than like a "V". so you could think of it as basically folding a longer hammock, to make it take less space, the trick is to fold it _without_ gathering the fabric at the turning points (so the gathered ends remain the "convergence points)

the only problem i see with this is that the hammock fabric, when loaded, takes a rather "half pipe" like shape, rather than a flat one, so if these turn points are flat (which would be the easiest to achieve), then the hammock might feel "a bit different" that way. i doubt the difference would be big, and i think a carefully matched loose sling, or slightly curved bar, would likely easily fix that (see below)

the horizontal "turn points" on each end obviously need to be strong enough, and wide enough. they could be made in several ways: a metal bar that's slightly bent for instance, anchored at both ends (in front, it could be using both driver and passenger handle bolts, for instance), or it could be a long piece of dyneema loosely hung between to sturdy attachement points. this means you'd need an additional strong attachement point on the floor, but in most vehicles that should be easy to find, and its location won't be that critical. the advantage of this approach is that you can use any hammock you like, unmodified, and even switch between using it in-vehicle and on the trees without much hassle. with a bit of imagination, one could also use this idea to make a short hammock (shorter length of fabric) behave like a longer one, but my conclusion so far was that it is just simpler and more versatile to have a system to just use a nice long hammock, and otoh, good quality fabric these days is cheap and light for its strength, so it's not worth it for the "fabric economy" either, but perhaps you might find there's reasons to develop that further.

hope it helps, do let us know if you try it, i've been meaning to for years, and never got around to it somehow. i'd be really curious what you find.