Quote Originally Posted by TeeDee View Post
Have a question about this that hopefully others can answer for me. This applies to hammocks with a structural ridge line only.

I have really been wondering about this stretching that people have been reporting.

I am having trouble understanding how the fabric stretching would cause the hang to get lower and then how simply tightening the suspension would eliminate the problem.

It seems to me that since the HH suspension is made of spectra which has very low to extremely low stretch, that would eliminate the suspension as the source of the problem. Also, I have measured the ridge line on my HH ULBA and never detected any difference in the length when hung.

That would leave 2 sources for the stretch: 1. the nylon fabric of the body of the hammock, and 2. the nylon tree huggers supplied by Hennessy. Both stretch.

I can understand how the tree huggers stretching lowers the hammock.

If the nylon fabric of the hammock body stretches, that would lower the bottom of the hammock, but then tightening the suspension would only pull the ridge line tighter, but would not affect the body fabric of the hammock. Since the body fabric of the hammock isn't affected, the only way to raise the bottom of the hammock because the hammock fabric stretched would be to raise the tree huggers on the tree.

So my problem is: why should re-tightening the suspension raise the hammock if the body fabric stretched?

It would seem that simply switching from the nylon tree huggers to polyester tree huggers would eliminate the stretch problem that re-tightening solves.

Am I missing something here????
You're right, to a point. Two things, though, from my own observations...

One, the spectra support lines aren't ZERO stretch. They're LOW stretch. When my ULB was new, I got quite a lot of stretch out of the cords. Even after they've been "broken in," I still see more stretch (per foot, of course) than I do with the Spyderline I use from APS.

Two, my HH ridgeline stretches significantly. I always assumed it was spectra, but now that I think about it, I have doubts. Anyway, if the ridgeline stretches, that explains changing the sag by tightening the suspension. I've actually experienced this effect myself. It's not nearly as pronounced as a non-ridgeline hammock or my couple of attempts at using a stretchy ridgeline (550 cord), but it's definitely noticeable.

I never measured the stock tree huggers to see if they stretched or not - mostly because I chucked the whole suspension as soon as I saw something better. I will say that I never noticed any significant stretching in that area.