I've gotten to spend one glorious night in my hammock this year. The other 5 attempts have been stymied by weather, specifically high winds. I live in Western OK and late spring/early summer is marked by frequent afternoon/evening pop-up thunderstorms, from benign to severe, that are typically preceded by sustained straight-line winds ranging from 30 - 50 mph. Do you know what else Western OK has? A serious lack of suitable trees for hammocking. I purchased a Tato stand to counter the tree issue but unfortunately, I have zero confidence in my setup to hold up to the conditions I described. Even in the absence of "bad" weather, we can still have windy days with gusts over 20mph.
I'm running a WBRR suspended from a Tato stand with a cheap-ish Wise Owl tarp. My tie-outs for the Tato stand are the aluminium "Y" stakes and yellow zing-it that comes with it. The tarp is secured, with its stock cordage, under the Tato spreader bar to the existing zing-it loops (which I've already had to replace once) and its tie-outs are also secured to aluminium "Y" stakes. Our soil here is that red dirt that the country music scene here loves to sing about. I haven't had a stake pull out but I've also never put them to the test in windy conditions.
I guess my fear is that the Tato stand is the weak link and a good gust of wind will turn my tarp into a sail and just flip the whole thing over with me in it. To those of you that have put your gear up against high winds, am I just being a wuss?
If my set-up is an issue what can I do, if anything, to make it more resilient?
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