Kicking off our ‘Know your Knots’ series with the Bowline
To kick off Longshore Sailing School’s ‘Know your Knots’ series, we rhetorically ask “Why are there so many knots?”
Indeed, the variety of knots is a function of circumstance. What if you require a loop that won’t slip? Or, if necessary, can be untied under load? What if two lines with different diameters need to be tied together? Or a line needs to be kept from running free of a block?
Through our ‘Know your Knots’ series we hope to show you knot tying is an art form and one that’s fun to learn.
Our First Knot, The Bowline
The Bowline (pronounced /ˈboʊlɪn/ or /ˈboʊlaɪn/) is a yachtsman’s favorite. Although we rate it a three out of five on our difficulty scale, once you’ve mastered it we’re sure you’ll use it time-and-again.
The Bowline is used to form a loop (or eye) in the end of a line. It is designed not to slip or jam.
To tie the bowline make a small loop a foot-or-so from the end of the line. At Longshore we teach the riddle “the rabbit,” the end of the rope, “comes out of its hole,” the loop you just made, “goes around the tree,” the opposite end of the loop, “and back into his hole again“. You can use the buttons to the right to step through the process or click ‘Animate’ to loop through the sequence of pictures. Practice saying it while you do it:
The rabbit comes out of its hole,
goes around the tree, and
back into his hole again.
Being able to untie a knot is just as important as tying it.
If untying a knot seems trivial, then you’ve never loaded one enough for it to jam. A shining property of the bowline is its refusal to jam, even under heavy load. In fact, the knot can always be untied by loosing it from ‘the bunny’s path around the tree’.