I camp quite a bit at the beach. I’ve yet to come up with a good way of setting up a tarp on the beach that handles wind very well . I have a few tarps and lots of Kelty tarp poles. The obvious challenge with tarps is that they catch the wind. The best configuration I’ve found seems to be to use a 6 sided tarp, use 6 tarp poles, and set the tarp in a modified A configuration, but the sharper the pitch on the A frame, the more surface area for the wind to catch. The closer the A frame is to flat on the top, it seems the less wind resistance. I use ground grabbas and 7 strand paracord, so the tarp will rip long before the stakes would ever pull up. From my experience, even using tent springs to reduce shock, when the wind blows much above 25 mph tarps really start to struggle to hold their shape and I start expecting the seams to rip, which happened recently in about 30mph winds. The challenge is that on our beaches 30mp winds are quite common. I don’t think there is any magic formula but has anyone else found a pitch that works well in higher wind on the beach, using a tarp and tarp poles. I hate to admit it but the guys who use those Coleman pop up canopy’s seem to fare better because those things have vents on the top so the wind doesn’t collect as baldly… I’m not going to switch to a pop up canopy, because those are for dorks, but I wonder if there is a way to vent a tarp?
We use NRS River Wings when we raft; they seem to hold up to strong winds pretty well. We had one stay up while our entire camp kitchen got blown over last fall;
maybe you can try pitching the tarp in this configuration?
Also would not advise an “easy up” type structure in strong winds, in my experience they don’t seem to stay put (it was part of the camp kitchen that got blown over).
Thank you very much for the input and I’ll follow up on the River Wing. Is it maybe an exceptionally durable tarp? That is the exact configuration i use with my moutainsmith tarp and it ripped setting it up in higher wind. Maybe I just need to research and find the most durable tarp available and maybe beef it up with tarp tape. I’m definitely not going to do an easy up. A few years back, I saw a gust of wind catch one of those easy up’s at the beach. It was blowing down the beach about 20 miles per hour. A group of guys, who it didn’t belong to, chased it down and caught it about 10 feet before it crashed into a toddler. The elderly couple who were using the easy up never would have been able to catch it and it would have been a disaster. Other people will say it just wasn’t anchored properly and that’s probably true, but I just don’t like them because I think they are dangerous. If my tarp and poles fail, no one gets hurt and that’s how I like it.
Oof yeah, I’ve seen easy-ups that were anchored, weighted down, and still blown over.
As for the wing; it is more tent-like than tarp-like, it seems pretty strong though. Maybe it’s light-weight helps keep it from getting caught in the wind?
I think there are several brands out there that have similar structures. NRS is probably the “fanciest”. I have many friends who have them and they have used them for a pretty long time, over 10 years.
Thank you for the reply. I looked up the River Wing. It’s a little pricey but it definitely looks like a better tarp than either my Kelty or MountainSmith. The MountainSmith is a great value and probably suitable for most applications, but I don’t trust it in winds over 25-30mph, since I’ve already torn one. MountainSmith is an awesome company and they immediately sent me a replacement, but I’m going to have to bite the bullet and find something a little tougher since the beach often has higher winds than inland. Thank you for the input and happy outdoor adventures to you!
I think your question answered itself. I imagined myself in that situation and, if rain is not much of a factor, I would take a cheap tarp and some soup can or vessel that makes a circle I like diameter of and placing the diameter template cut the bottom part of each diameter, leaving the flap it makes. If you are really industrious, I suppose you could do this with a quality tarp and sew reinforcement at the obvious stress points of tear. Never actually did it but it seems doable.