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Make-and-mend days

August 6, 2026 1:43 pm

Assemble your materials: a length of rope for the grommet, a spool of small cotton line, and either instructions for making a grommet or waxed whipping twine (if you choose to join the two rope ends instead).

When weather lets you goof off without a guilty conscience

Issue 61: July/Aug 2008

Some days dawn gray, wet, and windy and promise only scud, thump, and splash. But if you are safely anchored and generously scheduled, you can smugly sip a second cup of coffee — brewed, not instant — and declare this an old-fashioned make-and-mend day.

I love make-and-mend days. Sure, lots of good projects can be done, but they can coexist with those appealing newfound hours of enforced, guilt-free relaxation. Being a make-and-mender is not for the faint of heart, however. Many a skipper, after glimpsing the morning’s wild, woolly weather outside the cove, still gets underway, despite knowing there’s a nasty bash to windward before reaching the marina and, eventually, the long commute of the new work-week in a stressed-out, hopped-up world. This is the Sunday-itis syndrome. Make-and-mend is its nemesis and cure.

If you decide not to unlay the rope to make a grommet, you can join the two ends together with sail twine and cover the joint with a nice whipping. This is not a true grommet as it cannot take any loads, but it’s fine for a net bag. Try an inner diameter of 4 to 5 inches for your first bag.

To qualify as a make-and-mender, you must be able to:

Cheerfully toss schedules in the trash bucket. This is far easier said than done, and it may require a certain vagueness about when you’ll return to work or else some extra days built into your float plan.
Enjoy time’s windfall. Remember, time is the one thing we can’t bank. Try thinking of snow days, if you had them in childhood, to enhance appreciation and reduce guilt.
Appreciate the philosophy of “eating dessert first.” With all this newfound time on a wind-tossed day, what boat projects would please you (and the boat) most?

Truly unrepentant make-and-menders also possess the following:

A decent bosun’s kit and spare bits of cordage, wood, and other assorted spare parts;
An adequate ship’s library;
Ingredients for a magnificent, cooked breakfast; and
Charts and cruising guides beyond the local area, for dreaming.

Clove-hitch a row of evenly spaced loops around your grommet. For a first bag, 10 or 11 loops will work well. Leave enough cotton line to make a V-shaped loop between each clove hitch. You can use a netting needle if you want, but I just coil the line neatly and let some out as needed. Tie the ends together when you finish this row. Start a second row using the knot shown here, and keep going until the cylindrical net is the length you want.

Not time-wasters

By no means do make-and-menders consider lay days to be time-wasters. They know, because most already own good old boats, that such days are actually time-expanders.

“Nice? It’s the only thing,” said the Water Rat solemnly, as he leaned forward for his stroke. “Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing — absolutely nothing — half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing,” he went on dreamily, “ . . . messing about in boats . . . messing . . . ” This philosophy, from Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, is intuitively understood and actively cultivated by make-and-menders.

One of the finest make-and-mend days I ever spent was aboard a 1937 vintage wooden schooner tucked way up in a slough near Oriental, North Carolina, while an October gale blew itself out. After an excellent breakfast of coddled eggs, sausage, and fresh coffee, an exploring party set out to row the dinghy as far as we could up winding, ever-narrowing channels until we followed one to its end. There we found a quiet bank of Spartina grass with a dark hole in it and a glitter that blinked and declared itself to be an eye. The eye’s otter-owner slid quickly down the bank, dived under water, and left a trail of bubbles for us to marvel at.

Back aboard the boat, I chose my project: making net bags for holding onions and potatoes. Fueled by the good breakfast and using spare bits of cordage and directions from one of the books in the ship’s library, I lost track of several happy hours that dissolved into pleasurable productivity. These two bags gave many years of service and style in the galley and many happy memories in the mind. Illustrations show the sequence for making them. Enjoy your make-and-mend days!

To finish your bag, thread some cotton line through the last row of loops, cinch it up, and tie securely with a knot of your choice. Hang it on a handy knob or hook and enjoy your handiwork!

Resources

Good instructions for making rope grommets can be found in many books, but I like Hervey Garrett Smith’s The Marlinspike Sailor and Brion Toss’ The Complete Rigger’s Apprentice.

Karen Sullivan has been an unrepentant make-and-mender since the 1970s. In 2006 she sailed her Dana 24, Minstrel, from Seward, Alaska, to Port Townsend, Washington, via the Inside Passage, accompanied by icebergs, whales, logs, and rain.

Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com