Hey Shug here. My last video
I was talking to you about hanging your basic hammock and finding your sweet spot
And today what I want to talk about is the ridge line now. Yes
I know I did a video on ridge lines several years ago
But it's gotten kind of buried back in my video archive and it's kind of long
so I just want to touch on some points cuz
Several people asked about the ridge line your choice whether you want to use one or not
You don't need to but I certainly use them on all mine to find my sweet spot and keep my sag
right where I want it and
This orange line right there holding my
mesh ridge line organizer and goes from the head end of my hammock to the foot end of my hammock is the ridgeline and
Hammock sag, is that right there?
That's the way I have my hammock set up from my most comfortable spot what I call my sweet spot
So my ridge line is just larks head it on
The continual loop which is this which goes up to my cinch buckle on this hammock
And it's just larks headed on the head end right here
And on the foot end here, there's just a loop that goes on to this continual loop, which is part of my hammock suspension
Which loops around right here. This ridge line is actually a small Whoopie sling
and I just have this little perfect knot right here that just takes this loose end of the
Whoopie sling ridge line and I just kind of use it to keep that tight and out of the way
Now, of course you can use whatever you want to make a ridge line
I'll put some links in the description box below this video show them where you can buy a Whoopie sling
Ridge line or you can use paracord or utility cord that I get from REI
Some stuff stretches some does and of course this am steel does not stretch
but the
Nice thing about when you first set your Ridge line is you want to be able to adjust it and two or three?
inches or one inch either way, you'll have fun playing with it to find your personal sag, or
Your sweet spot in your hammock and this is commonly known in the hammock world when you set your Ridgeline
Your ridgeline will go about 83% of the length of your hammock. So
That hammock is ten and a half feet and my ridge line is actually set at ninety two and a half inches
Is that eighty three percent?
May or may not but it's in the ballpark. This is just the starting place. It's not a hard and fast rule
So we'll do a quick calculation here. So we're gonna go
11-foot hammock times twelve inches equals one hundred and thirty-two inches
So we got 132 inches and we're gonna go times
83 and then we're gonna hit that percent key and hit equal so about a hundred and nine inches
For an 11-foot hammock is a place to start one hundred nine point five six. Hey, I see me back there. Hey, yo
So I have a lot of sag in my hammock
That's how I like it for one thing when I'm sitting in my hammock. Then my head is not touching the ridgeline
So this is about a ten and a half foot hammock. I made my ridgeline is about
93 just a little over 93 inches right there if I take my suspension
And I pull it straight tight
You see the ridge line keeps the hammock
Hanging like that and not like this
In a nutshell, that's what it does. So now I've hung up my Dutch. We're a basic Dutch we're net 'less hammock
So I added my own here. You can see that's some utility cord
I used that's an 11 foot hammock the same thing when I sit in here. My ridgeline is well up above my head
If I lay back I have the proper amount of Bend right there in the ridgeline
so this ridge line is REI utility cord, which is pretty much the same as
Paracord you can see here. I just have a a bite tied in which then I loop into a larks head knot and
Larks head knot is just this right here. I have a
Loop on the end of this and I've just kind of looped it right around itself. That just makes it stay a little better and
Not slide down around the hammock
larks head
That one now when the foot in here, you want a knot that you can do and undo really quickly
So I did sort of a lash knot and then these last three wraps or me. Just tying up the loose ends
If you look closely you can see I got a little black line right there
I did with a sharpie and that was one of my measuring points
Now the reason I use this lash nut on the end as you want a knot you can tie and untie pretty quickly
But will hold and now that I've untied it I see I have a I have a little black mark right there
So this first one I showed you right there must have been one
I was trying in the beginning but I went back to that one that little dot I made right there is probably the perfect
83% if I were to measure the length on this 11 foot
But you can see I kind of went on up to this one right here
So make a few little dots to kind of know your range in there. All right
Now we're going to do this wrap knot on here
I'm gonna pull this up to the mark I made which is right there and I'm gonna wrap that right on my continual loop
and from here, I'm gonna take the line and go underneath
Pull it where I want it wrap it over the top like that
Then I'm gonna come around go underneath it come back around the side
Come around the top like that
I'm going to come underneath and
Go back around the continual loop and I will do that one more time come around go underneath
Now I'm gonna come to the front and I'm gonna put a slippery half hitch in there, which is where I take my line
Double it through so we kind of have a double knot
Like looks like this you see that
Leave a little bit of a tag hanging out
tighten that up now the reason for this
Slippery half hitch is when I go to untie this thing to move it in my testing
It's a much easier not to pull out. So that's why I put slippery half hitch back in
About a banging about a boom a
little bit of a tag
I'm gonna tighten that up
Now I've got this bit of extra cord here
Which I could just leave dangling. But what I do is I just do a little series of
Just to kind of tighten it up, especially once I'm done leave it loose until you find your place
But you can either just cut that off. I don't know why I left it. It's probably just because I'm lazy
or maybe I knew I'd do this video again some day and just kind of
Thought is off like that. I got a little bit extra up top one more
But that's the not that I can do an undo and just move this thing an inch or two at a time
To try to find that sweet spot
But a lot of people use a Ridgeline to help them get in and out of the hammock, too
and I've seen people they just
Have they struggle to get out and you can grab that Ridgeline cause it's structural and kind of use it to pull yourself up
Hope this helped you out. Hope it explained it a little bit. Try it. You may like it
You may not what do you got to lose just a little bit of cord and a little bit of time
We all got that right now in this Cove at 19 thing. Good luck out there. I hope you're hanging in chin-up
All secure in Sector seven
just wanted to mention I've been on - that's right - podcast late Lee's first one is called the Reverend hunter podcast and
Tony talks to
Outdoorsman soar about their their faith or their spirituality and how that sort of connects to the woods
so I'm gonna put the links for both these podcasts below this video and the second one's called backpacker radio and that Zach and
Juliana and they tend to be a little bit more wild children. It's a little bit more of an irreverent podcast about
backpacking in general and they wanted to talk hammocking and about my
circus clown life with Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey
So I want to warn you you're gonna hear a little bit more of an off-color version of me
This is probably the version of me that you would get around a campfire once I know yeah
So I'm a guy that always plays the crowd
I'm playing - if you feel like you give them a listen
I'd like to thank both those podcasts for having me on it was a lot of fun
It really feels some time during this covert 19 time and I think that's what we're all doing. Good luck everybody
Talk to you later. It shook signing off
The shadow