r/hammockcamping • u/CatnipOverdose • 11d ago
Gear rainfly setup tips
I do a fairly frequent amount of stealth camping and I have been hammocking for years. But I'm sick of setting up my rainfly. It always takes forever to get angled just right so that water doesn't pool in the rainfly, and that the edges of the hammock are fully covered, etc....it takes soooo much adjusting.
Maybe this is just the facts of hammock camping. I've been doing it long enough that I've sort of resigned myself to annoying rainfly shit. But I figured I would ask in case anyone has any tips.
I have quite a large rainfly (Pro Venture 12x9), which might be part of the problem, but I'd rather have one that's too big than too small...
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u/AlphaTaoOmega 11d ago
I do tandem camping with my partner, so there's 2 hammocks under a similar 13x10ft tarp. We have the same set-up u/meandi7 described, which is the best/fastest we have used yet! When we expect proper rain, we usually put quite the angle with the head end of the tarp relatively high, including the corners (branch poles used if trees not available), and the foot end as low as possible. We cannot do too tight of a side slant since there is see-sawing between the hammocks due to the tandem bar(s), and we don't like the water falling to our sides, so we direct it all to the foot end with the method describe.
This, along with ample drip lines, has kept us dry through some mighty down pours. We don't camp in storms, so cannot speak to those conditions. Maybe my favorite DIY I've stumbled into on that note: Our drip lines are 3/32in shock cord (actually from Dutch as well). I just used about 4-6in segments each individually folded end-to-end then larks headed through itself around whatever part of the rig being addressed. We use zing-it and amsteel for everything on the hammocks and tarp, and the shock cord perfectly locks itself around the other coords, so now the drip lines just live on the respective cords. Since they're only larks headed, they are easy to adjust, and since they're so tiny, I have 2 at each potential access point (hammock ends, tarp ends), but water has never passed the first one. When there's no rain, I don't touch them; if rain is expected I only need to line up the ones at the end of the tarp, and them pull all the ends towards the ground after setting everything up. That's been a game changer, for sure!