Catamaran Hashira
By Lazarus Redmayne
Halfway through the week at Hedonism II, the Swinkation schedule included a sunset cruise on the Caribbean for any who wanted to attend. It should be no surprise that almost all of the attendees opted in, including Blue and myself. And because our port of call was Negril Jamaica, the sun, heat, and humidity were all turned up to 11. I opted to stay in the shade as much as possible while the sun was high, though I did jump off the boat to swim through a sea cave with Blue. She was very happy to see some bats tucked away overhead as well as several little crabs … although a friend of ours who was not wearing water shoes accidently kicked a sea urchin stuck to one wall and subsequently had less of a good time.
The boat dropped us off to watch the cliff divers at Rick’s Cafe where Blue and I continued to swim around looking for interesting critters. After everyone had piled back onto the boat, I decided to give the crew something to look at (aside from all of the naked people on the boat). I had a nice solid pole to work with, so I put Blue into a nice little Hashira predicament using some synthetic rope in very appropriate colors. (Synthetic because of the humidity, water and salt.)
Blue and I had a lovely time at Hedonism II and thoroughly enjoyed meeting all of the attendees who made up this inaugural year of the Swinkation event (put on through the combined efforts of Swinky Life, The Accidental Swingers Podcast, and Concations).
Risk Management and Safety
This was intended to be a predicament tie and a partial suspension. However, Blue turned it into a full suspension at one point by pulling both of her legs up and sitting with her legs crossed midair. Tops be warned! Your rope bottom may decide to test their physical limitations in ways that could put their physical safety at risk. In this case, the knot I used to create the Hashira was quite stable and was able to stand up to Blue’s wriggling and bodyweight, but it might not have been the case if I had used a different approach.
When it comes to my personal risk profile, I prefer to be at least two failures away from disaster, so the Hashira Anchor point was backed up with a Klemheist Hitch … more about that in the annotations below!
Rope Needed
- Chest: One 30’ (~9m) rope
- Hips: One 30’ (~9m) and one 15’ (~4.5m) rope
- Arms/Hojo: One 30’ (~9m) rope
- Waist Upline: One 30’ (~9m) rope
- Hardpoint: One 30’ (~9m) rope
- Head: One 15’ (~4.5m) rope
- Waist: One 15’ (~4.5m) rope
- Thigh: One 30’ (~9m) rope
Scene Credits
Scene
- Knowing how to make a Hashira hard point will allow you to do something like this anywhere you have a vertical pole, column, tree, etc.
- I started with a Klemheist Hitch. This has a tremendously strong grip and can hold even on smooth surfaces like stripper poles or poles painted with marine-grade gloss paint! I used this Klemheist Hitch as additional support for the Hashira so there were two elements providing grip on the pole. You can’t see the details of the knot in this shot, but you can in the tutorial.
- (Hidden behind Blue’s head.) I brought the tail from (1) down and added a Hashira Anchor to act as my hard point. I added a carabiner to make running uplines a little easier, but you could easily do without.
- Pentagram harness
- Leto hip harness
- Place arms behind the pole, then bind them with the modified Hojojitsu Ittatsu-ryu.
- Lark’s Head Double Column attaching waist to pole (yellow rope at the waist).
- Attach a new rope to (4) by weaving it into the pad, then running it up to the Hashira Hard Point (2).
- Somerville bowline around the left mid-thigh.
- Tail from (8) run to the Hashira Hard Point (2) and used to lift the leg and tie it so it cannot reach the floor. (Attaching Suspension Uplines, Suspension Frictions)
- Extended Lark’s Head Double Column through the mouth attaching head to the pole.
- I then started playfully whacking Blue with Zoe’s Zipper Slapper. She still had one foot on the floor and nothing keeping her from doing so, so she tried to dodge and retreat by running away around the pole. Thing is, the Hashira was firmly anchored to one spot, so she could only go about halfway around the pole before she was brought up short. Hence the playful and challenging spirit you see in her eyes in this very fun shot! All of this was greatly amusing and entertaining to the on-lookers. 😊 I even had a few members of the boat crew stop and ask me where they could learn rope!
