Must Haves For Your B.O.B pt 1

Today I am starting a short series of posts about B.O.B necessities, these are items that hubby and I have in our bags. I hope my brief review of each item will be helpful to you in deciding what would and would not work for you in your personal bags.

The Hennessy Hammock

Hubby has this and he LOVES IT. Its light weight, around 3.5 lbs, and take less then five minutes to set up. The model that he has is the “Explorer Deluxe” which has a 300 # weight capacity. After numerous years of sleeping on the hard ground, this alternative to the traditional primitive camping will provide you with a much better nights sleep. It provides you with shelter to cook, and relax out of the elements without being confined to the inside of a tent. As demonstrated on our groups last January trip, when rain started pouring early in the morning, hubby was sitting under the extended rain fly in his comfortable chair watching the rain dance on the river. He had thought about making coffee with his Swedish army Trianga alcohol stove but was ready to get home before the roads got to bad.

The main design feature of this hammock tent is its ability to sleep almost perfectly perpendicular to the ground. The A-symmetrical design allows the person to place half his body on one side of the hammocks center line and the other half on the opposing side to give you a balanced night’s sleep.

Most people consider this hammock tent a three season, however with the appropriate measures you can make it a four season shelter with the simple vehicle car sunshade to reflect heat back to your body. The manufacturer does sell a winter attachment to combat cold weather climates but do the math, car shades are cheaper. Hubby used his Military modular sleep system on that trip and survived, which that will be another topic to blog about.

This is Hubbys set up from our groups January camping trip

The Hennessy Hammock of course doesn’t give you the amount of space to store items inside such as a pack and other large items, that is where 550 cord comes into play. You can simply run 550 cord along the same axis as the hammock between the hammock and rain fly to hang packs, clothes, and boots. This option will keep your items dry and up off the ground as well.

Hubby did not purchase his directly from the manufacturer, actually there is an EBAY® store that sells them at really good prices, they are located in the Appalachian Mountains of N.C. and the staff is very helpful. There are also several accessories you can get to compliment the hammock, one that has caught his eye are the clips that attach to the edges of the rain fly that give you the ability to attach water bottles and collect rain water.

These hammocks also come in various sizes from small children to full size adults, example is if you weigh 245 lbs, don’t buy the hammock that has a weight limit of 250 lbs. Hubby has around 80-90 lb weight leeway with his 300lb hammock. There are various YOUTUBE videos out there if you need more information about the Hennessey Hammock.