June 15th of this year, I huddled under my hammock tarp in a clearing in the middle of Michaux State Forest in Pennsylvania. It'd been a race against time, and one that I'd ultimately lost but only just. We arrived to camp late but it was just as well, because the previous group of knuckleheads hadn't cleared out in time and we just had to sit on a rock and wait as the storm inched closer and closer and these guys slouched out of that campsite one by one by one with a seemingly endless assortment of utterly unnecessary junk. Generators, solar panels, coolers upon coolers, and who knows what else.

You know how when you look at a storm on the weather radar it goes dark green, light green, yellow, orange, red, purple, white? The white part was poised to trample the exact spot on the mountain we were sitting on. And still sitting is right. At one point I saw one chump troop out of there carrying a Ryobi battery powered weed whacker.

And here I thought we were being flamboyantly decedent by bringing my pop up canopy for the picnic table.

(There's a video there, but if your client doesn't render it you can get to it from here.)

But back to the storm, and my tarp, which I strung up too late and the usual way with a sextet of tautline hitch knots on the titchy little guylines, (a sextet being six boring fiddly knots, not the much more fun time you were thinking of instead) working just as fast and efficiently as I could I while I was pelted by fat raindrops, beech nuts, and leaves. Fast, perhaps, but not quite fast enough.

As I swung in my hammock and dripped dry, I contemplated that there must be a better way. Smart money might have been not to put up my tent and hammock last. But you know what I mean.

Well, of course there's a better way. There are no end to the widgets available for pulling taut the lines on your tarp or tent. It's only any wonder we aren't ankle deep in the things.

But this one is mine.

Herewith I throw my floppy boonie hat into the area of, in the absolute broadest sense possible, the cottage gear industry: Pinguys are my own take on a guyline tensioning gizmo, and they're shaped like penguins because of course they are.

I made you read this far to hook your interest, because I totally just make you read an ad and I'm pleased to mention that these are for sale on my website, presently consisting of the complete entirety of the "camping/outdoors" category, such as it is. I'm just sly like that.

I do these in three sizes:

• #2, for the 1.5mm, 1.75mm, and 2mm titchy lines for your fancy ultralight tarp or tent, the one you'd string up with dental floss if you could.
• #3, which fits 3mm, 3.5mm, and 4mm lines commonly found on brand name tents and tarps as well as most of the bewilderingly massive galaxy of Chinese knockoff gear.
• #4, which handily fits 550 paracord.

I quietly let slip the existence of these things a little earlier, in the post that contained this picture:

Obviously I wasn't just blithely going to start handing these out without first thoroughly verify that they, you know, actually work. I'm pleased as punch to report that via extensive field testing — read: using them for everything I could think of on my last couple of camping outings — that they do. I got thoroughly soaked in Bald Eagle a couple of weeks ago and rode out another storm just as easy as you please.

Of course other options exist and there myriad reasons to recommend them. But if you go with mine you get the warm and fuzzy feeling of giving your money to me rather than any anonymous asshole, let alone some megacorporation, the Chinese communist party, or ye gods forbid, Amazon. Every penny of which I do solemnly swear to blow on knives and camera gear, which I will proceed to show you all.

I kicked around several iterations of the name and my hopes were dashed when the obvious answer was already taken. Bummer.

I designed the Pinguys to work the way I want them to and solve the types of problems I want to solve. I don't propose that they're the be-all and end-all of tarp line hardware, but they're pretty versatile. For a start, I wanted to be able to leave them on my lines in position and ready to use. Thus, just pass your line through the holes in both ends and your penguin buddy will remain in place wherever you place him.

I tie a loop in one end of each of my guylines with a figure eight knot and leave the other end free. Keeping the Pinguy up near the loop lets you easily affix the entire assemblage to one of the grommets on your tarp by sticking the head of the loop through, and then passing the Pinguy and the rest of the line through it. Run the standing end of the line out to your stake and back, pulling it tight as you go, and you can lock this off by wrapping it under one wing, and then either around the waist and under the other or, if you're feeling particularly paranoid about wind, by making an X going around the back and over your standing line, then down and around the other side.

The Pinguy's belly on the side facing the beak is serrated, for added grip on your cord and slippage prevention. This is probably unnecessary, but it looks cool and a lot of the commercial options have that feature so I dutifully stole it.

You can do the same thing to tie the ends of your tarp to a pair of trees, by wrapping your line through its loop around the tree, passing the standing end through the gommet on your tarp as before, and wrapping it around the Pinguy to lock it off.

Notably, adding tension to your lines e.g. in the event they get wet and stretch takes no effort and if you're deft you can do it without leaving your shelter and getting rained on in the process. And unlike tying a Prusik or tautline hitch in your lines, there's no such thing as messing it up by tying the knot too close so you run out of room to slide it up and add tension. If you're right up against a tree you can use one of these in situations where a tautline hitch just won't work because there isn't enough room.

If you're a shock cord kind of bird you can just tie your cord on via the foot ring in each Pinguy, and tension a separate line under the wings the same as before. I don't do it that way, but there's nothing stopping you!