My brother's 'just use carabiners' tent advice nearly cost me a night in a field

He swore 15mm locking biners would hold my tarp in a Kansas thunderstorm, but by 2 AM the grommet ripped clean through the fabric and I ended up wrapping myself in a wet tarp like a burrito, so has anyone else had a savvy relative's shortcut wreck their whole shelter setup?

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the_claire28d ago

Kansas storms are no joke, I'll give you that. But I've used plain 15mm non-locking biners on tarps for years and never had a grommet tear. The issue is how you attach them. If he told you to clip straight through the grommet, that's your problem right there. You gotta wrap the tarp edge around a good size stick or a small rock first, then clip the biner to that. That spreads the pull out way better than one tiny hole. The biner was probably fine, the method was the weak link. I've seen the same trick save a tarp in a 40 mph gust on the coast, so I'm not ready to trash the whole idea yet.