Okay this has probably been done a hundred times before and I didn't really even come up with the idea but it was still pretty damn sweet when I got this thing all put together. One day I had been walking down the street at Granville Island and saw that hammock shop that sells the fancy chair hammocks. On the door they had a picture of some guy sitting in a hammock mounted off his boom. That got me thinking.Now as per usual I was trying to keep things on the cheap; which usually results in a McGyver type result held together with toothpicks and band aids but this time it was all pretty above board. The GI Hammock shop had really nice hammocks but they were a hundred bucks; I went to Canadian tire and picked one up on sale for $19. Obviously it was not as nice but hey it is more than functional. I took it out to the boat and when I went on my first cruise this year I figured out how to rig it up. Basically I put the spinnaker pole on the mast at its highest setting and ran the spin halyard through the jaw at the end of the pole. I attached the spin halyard to the hammock and it was done. Or so I thought.I hoped in my newly rigged hammock and it immediately swung out to the side so I was held out off the port side of the boat. This was great; the boat heeled over a few degrees but generally took it like a champ. The only problem was getting back. There was no easy way for me to swing the pole forward to the bow to allow me to get out. In the end Cheryl rescued me. This design flaw was simply fixed by attaching a line to the forestay allowing you to pull yourself back in. Practically this is a fun way to sit off the boat and read a book, fish, or soak your feet. My next mission is to figure out how to rig two of them. I have a idea involving the main halyard and the backstay. If one was to get really hardcore with this I imagine someone could use this as some crazy boson’s chair and rig it way up the mast. Hmmm.
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