It’s not secure, but it releases easily
Issue 55 : Jul/Aug 2007
The highwayman’s cutaway knot (also called the highwayman’s cut) is said to derive its popularity from gentlemen in that profession who needed to untie a horse quickly. The knot is a slip hitch with a difference from all the others I have seen, in that it does not have a permanent bight of rope on the other side of the post or rail to which it is tied. Thus, when it is untied or slipped, the entire knot drops away cleanly at the front of the rail and no loose end has to be pulled around the rail.
It is not the most secure way to tie up the tender, but it is much easier to cast off. I hitch the dinghy with a conventional round turn and two half hitches, so it is properly secured until it is time to go. Before climbing into the dinghy, I replace the solid hitch with the highwayman’s cutaway, with the end hanging down into the dinghy. When we are ready to cast off, there is no reaching up and no kinks of painter catching in deck or pontoon fittings. Instead, the coils of rope magically detach themselves and drop into the tender.
It is easy to tie. (1) Take a bight of the painter in your left hand, about 3 or 4 feet from the end not attached to the tender; I’ll call this the end line. Pass this one-third of the circumference around the left side of a mooring post and hold it there. (2) With the right hand, grasp the end line where it emerges from your left hand, pass that around the right side of the post, and loop it over the bight of the boat line, which is held in position by your left hand. Grasp that too, against the post, with your left hand. Slide your right hand along the end line, back around the post (clockwise if viewed from above) and across the front of the post. (3) Keep going until you can push a bight of this line through the original bight in the boat line. Pull on the boat line to tighten the hitch. (4) To release, tug on the end line.
The way it works is the third bight pushed through the first bight prevents the first one from slipping back through the second bight. Releasing the highwayman’s cutaway is like pulling out a cross-bolt.
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