One of the best additions we ever made to Winterlude was our hammock. The hammock provides the most romantic spot on the boat for stargazing, planet tracing, or full moon watching. It’s our private reading room or a great spot to relax, listening for dolphins spouting or manatees snorting. It also functions as our “space” when one of us needs space away … on a 37 foot boat, it’s sometimes nice to have a get-away.
David, being the romantic he is, bought me the hammock from a Colombian Trading boat for Valentine’s Day cruising the San Blas Islands. We have a pact that we don’t buy Valentine’s Day presents, we celebrate the holiday as a special day for the two of us, a special meal, usually aboard. But the Colombian Trading boat had traditional Kuna (San Blas) hammocks, used by the Kuna for sleeping every night – the hammocks are raised to the ceiling of their bamboo huts during the day for living space.
Here’s how we hang the hammock — David attached an extra line on each end – and each end had an extra “snap-fitting” tied on. He strung one end around the mast, above the mainsail to hold us from sagging too low onto the open hatch below. Then he wrapped the other end over the jib lines and snapped back to itself. Attaching it this way kept it from sliding down, keeping us comfortable.
I’m not sure what kind of hammock is best, we like our Kuna hammock.
But you may prefer other materials or even a rope style hammock like we have at the lake house. I don’t think there’s any right or wrong for a hammock aboard.
So what do others do? Leave comments and let us know how you enjoy your hammock! Cheers! Jan
Nice! Now we know how we can use our colombian hammocks (we have two) in our small boat 🙂
How funny – we were just discussing the other day how we need to buy/hang a hammock now that the weather is cooling off. Perfect time to enjoy the stars. Thanks for sharing!
Our schock santana 30 / 30 has two spinnaker halyards, so I usually haul each of them up a bit and attach them to the hammock ends, one through the whisker pole attachment on the front of the mast, and the other through a jib sail protector my boyfriend bougut, called a robstopper (?) Once I forgot to lock the whisker pole attachment and came crashing down, lesson learned. The robstopper is great because it distributes the weight on the forestay a little bit.