![]() I am concerned that your strong admonition to only comment if you have knots that are “needed” by sailors, (and that only after thinking carefully) may inhibit comments that are interesting. Loose knots are like an unsharpened knife, just plain dangerous.Īs you may come to see (and regret), I have a quiet morning with extra energy as I have got my sailing juices flowing by starting mental preparations to return to Alchemy. Lastly, for all knots, and especially for rolling hitches, I would want to emphasize taking a few seconds to work them up and hand tighten them leaving enough of a bitter end for it further tightening when the load comes on. Unlike you I have (occasionally) had trouble untying a conventional rolling hitch and the above variation has always allowed easy un-tying. In an case, this has worked well for us on Alchemy. I believe this covers the concerns that lead you to tandem knots and is simpler and easier. This gives more surface area for the knot to grip the chain/rope/etc. This makes for 3 turns below and 2 turns above as opposed to the conventional 2 below and 1 above). For my variation, I tie an extra turn both below and above the “hitch” in the middle of the knot. I suspect they are both attempts to solve the same problem. I will suggest one variation of the rolling hitch that is a bit easier to tie than the tandem knots you suggest that you may wish to try and has worked well for me. If another winch is not easy to come by or the lead is bad, a handy billy is an awful nice tool to have ready at hand and its use multiplies with the knowledge of how to tie and use rolling hitches. I would add 1 more benefit: the capacity to look good while responding to embarrassing moments, such as the winch wrap you mentioned. I enjoy your promoting the attributes of the rolling hitch and agree fully that it is an essential (and way underutilized) knot for sailors to have in their armamentarium. While both hitches, they are quite different knots. A clove hitch after a round turn belay is functionally and practically extremely different than a belay using a buntline hitch. To say that what you end up with is “in effect” a buntline hitch is, to my mind, quite misleading and inaccurate. It is essentially a clove hitch where the bitter end is no longer on the outside of the knot, but is on the inside, so that as the knot works tighter, the bitter end is crushed between the secured object (bollard) and the knot itself, making it so difficult to untie, as you correctly point out. This is in the picture you have labeled “wrong”.Ī buntline hitch is not pictured. A clove hitch leaves the bitter end on the outside of the knot (as in the “wrong” picture), relatively easy to wiggle and get the knot loose even after load. (I actually have some initial misgivings about a cow hitch used in this manner, but I will have to think about it.) You are correct in saying that if you have the finishing half hitches going in the same direction you will end up with a clove hitch. What you have pictured I call a cow hitch, or the way you have it a cow hitch ready to be slipped. I believe you may be misleading in your comments with respect to the round turn and 2 half hitches area. There are already excellent how-to sites for the latter and I will link each knot to its instructions. Really, that’s it.īefore we get started, I should just say that I’m going to write about how we use each knot, not how to tie them. So maybe that’s why I decided early on that fixating on how many knots one can tie is at worst an affectation and at best a kind of quirky hobby that has very little to do with being a competent offshore sailor.īe that as it may, here’s a secret for you: We only need to know how to tie five simple knots to be a competent sailors. OK…really…the truth is I sucked big time at knot boards. The kid that made the most complex esoteric knots, most beautifully arranged, on the most beautifully varnished board, won a prize. Way, way, way back in time when I attended our yacht club’s junior sailing class, one of the tasks that the instructors set us each summer was to make a knot board. Doug has sailed over 30,000 miles with us on "Morgan's Cloud".
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