Sun n Fun 2011 may very we’ll go down as the year of The Claw, the ubiquitous yellow three-leg tiedown system that dominates the portable tiedown market. When an F1 tornado roared through the airport, The Claw got its supreme test. Did it pass? It generally appeared to perform we’ll and the company wasted no time getting testimonials up on its Web site. But there were dramatic failures of all the tiedown systems, including The Claw. Although The Claw staff told us no portable tiedown system could hold in the kind of winds that struck Sun n Fun, we think there are methods to tiedown that will survive those kinds of winds.
Walking The Line
After the storm abated, we walked the line and examined and talked to various owners about their tiedown strategies. The Claw was the most widely used. It has been aggressively marketed and with its unique, stake-and-leg design, its easy and quick to install. Based on our tests, its performance is highly variable depending on soil type and conditions. (Too dry is as bad as too wet.) Our tests have revealed pull resistance between 200 pounds and 600 pounds, but never the 1200 pounds the company claims.