That’s the question. But is there an answer?
Issue 57 : Nov/Dec 2007
Very early in the life of Good Old Boat magazine I learned to regret publishing any material about knots. Knots are difficult to understand and difficult to describe. Any description of how to tie a knot that goes beyond “tie the darned thing as shown in the illustration” will almost certainly be wasted words to most readers. Sadly, many illustrations are little better.
Knots also bring out odd elements in the personalities of otherwise pleasant and agreeably disposed sailors. Many sailors cannot tolerate the possibility that someone else may tie a knot differently than they do and call it by the same name. The ubiquitous bowline can be tied two ways, but I’d been sailing 35 years before I found a book on knots that al- lowed that either way was acceptable.
Several times each season someone will point to a knot on my boat and challenge, “What is the name of that knot?” The thought that it might not be “in Ashley’s” is almost more than they can bear. The orthodoxy in the tying of knots exceeds all but perhaps the orthodoxy of religion. Very few “new” knots are devised by anybody over the age of five. And yet, the knots found in Ashley’s Book of Knots were devised when only natural fibers were available. Natural fibers have a poor service life, but they have excellent coefficients of friction. I have found several knots that are improved by modifications that will allow them to be used with the more slippery lines currently popular.
Concerning the choice of doing a particular task with a knot or a device of some sort, sailors, like landsmen, are divided into two camps. Some sailors and most landsmen are limited to tying their shoes and little else. Other sailors glory in the use of knots for everything short of weather forecasting.
Knots are slower
Any sailor who has raced a few seasons with pickup crew from the yacht club lawn knows that knot-tying skills vary from sailor to sailor. And any serious racing sailor knows that knots are inherently slower than the devices that replace them. Where speed in each task is all, the no-cost knot will be replaced by the $30 snap shackle on all the winning boats. Eventually, he will have nary a knot left needed in the running of his boat.
Yes, yes, yes. Knots are cheaper. They are safer. They are more seamanlike. But they are slower, and you and your crew have to know how to tie them.
There is an aptitude problem with knots. Not everyone can be taught to tie every knot. I know of a woman who wrote an impassioned editorial about using knots instead of gizmos (see the July 2007 issue), and yet this otherwise skilled sailor will often tie the anchor line off to the deck cleat with the standing and hauling parts reversed. This is all the more peculiar considering she will make a proper cleat hitch in a mooring line and get it right every time.
In fact, the cleat hitch is not often made correctly. Take a walk down the pier at your local marina and you will note that nine out of 10 sailors and 11 out of 10 powerboaters can’t make a cleat hitch. In fact, they can’t make two hitches in a row that even look alike. Also, consider that even though there are nine or more bad cleat hitches for every one that is made correctly, very few badly tied vessels slip their mooring lines until their crews return and untie them.
So, learn to go easy on your fellow sailors, even the ones who put a granny knot in their shoelaces. The bowline can be tied two ways; the midshipman’s hitch is improved with a few extra turns, as is the rolling hitch. It is not the knot that is important, it is securing the line that is important. For that, nothing beats a cam cleat.
I guess I’m really not a purist.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
