We need MANLY knots

ON KNOT NIGHT at the club I was one of the few chosen to demonstrate my nautical skills.  I was manning a Knot Table all by myself. The Sheet Bend table, actually.  When a couple of likely learners drifted along I told them:  "I'll show you how to tie one, but I never use it myself. Don't trust it."  They wandered off looking vaguely dissatisfied, not grateful as they should have been. They stopped by some others and pointed in my direction, and after that for some reason nobody else stopped by.

Meanwhile, all around me, people at different tables  were cooing over Square Knots and Figure-Eight knots.  A large group of women at one table was clucking like a bunch of hens about how good the Clove Hitch was for tying fenders to lifelines. I could hardly believe it.  Who has to be shown how to tie fenders to lifelines for goodness' sake? Where have they been all their sailing lives?  Who has to be shown how to tie a Clove Hitch? And to top it all, they were praising their lady instructor as if she'd just discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls or figured out that the earth goes round the sun and not vice- versa, as they had obviously previously been given to imagine. 

Of course, I should have been manning the Running-Emergency-Bowline table, but there wasn't one because it isn't an official knot. I had been practicing the Running-Emergency-Bowline knot for weeks, ever since I saw it demonstrated at a Coast Guard Auxiliary meeting.  It's not a proper bowline, actually, but it looks very much like one at first glance.  What it's all about is this:  When someone falls off the end of a pier and seems to be drowning, you run as fast as you can along the pier toward him.  You run with a coil of rope in your hand, and as you run you give two deft flicks of the wrist and Voila!  the end of the rope suddenly has a loop that will not come undone, a sort of instant bowline. The drowner simply inserts himself into the loop, leaving you, the daring, gallant rescuer, to drag him ashore.

It looks quite magical and manly when you do it, even when you're not running down a pier, and I'm sure a lot of ladies would be attracted to a man who can do the Running Emergency Bowline, if ever the stupid club would allow a man to show them how he does it. 

If ever I become a club commodore, I'll make sure there's a Running-Emergency-Bowline knot table on Knot Night.  Never mind the dumb Sheet Bend. Never mind the wimpy Clove Hitch.  Manly knots is what we want. Knots that make the ladies swoon. Even if they aren't real knots.  

Today's Thought

I say that I am myself, but what is this Self of mine
But a knot in the tangled skein of things where chance and chance combine?
— Don Marquis, Heir and Serf

Tailpiece

Two little American Indian boys were sitting by the entrance to the reservation with a small puppy when a white man in a priest's robe drove up in an SUV.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"We're telling stories," said one boy. "Whoever tells the biggest lie gets to keep the dog."
"That's terrible," said the priest. "When I was a little boy I never told lies."
The boys looked at each other with big round eyes. Finally, one said: "Okay. That's it. The white man wins the dog."

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

The luck of the Turk’s Head

Read a new Mainly About Boats column by John Vigor here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
I DON’T SPEAK MUCH about this because, if too many people know about it, the magic disappears, but Turk’s Head knots bring good luck to a boat. I don’t know how I found this out. Perhaps it has something to do with enchanted circles. But I’ve had Turk’s Heads on every boat I’ve ever owned and I’ve always been wonderfully lucky. (Knock on wood.)

The Turk’s Head first intrigued me because it has no beginning and no end that you can see. It apparently acquired its name from its resemblance to a Turkish turban, or so they say. I suppose that’s as good an explanation as any.

Over the years I have almost conquered my impulse to cover every cylindrical object on my boats with Turk’s Heads. I am quite proud that my present boat has only two, and those quite modest, both on the varnished tiller. They act as end stops for a fine white whipping that I use as a hand grip.

Visitors often ask if I made them myself, and I always think what a stupid question. Do they imagine you can buy them at West Marine and shrink them to size on the job, for Pete’s sake?
I learned to make Turk’s Heads when I was a teenager. I taught myself from illustrations in knot books. As a matter of fact, just about everything I know about sailing I learned from books, including celestial navigation. It just needs a little patience and some serious practice.

Brion Toss, a respected nautical rigger, calls the Turk’s Head a “miraculous knot.” You have to allow for the fact that Toss is completely captivated by knots but even so he has a point. He likes to talk about its range of usefulness and its “elegant mathematical underpinnings.”

The latter refers to the Law of Common Division with reference to Turk’s Heads, discovered early last century by Clifford Ashley and George H. Taber, some of the most famous knot-makers ever known. This law controls the construction of the knot, which is defined by the number of leads and bights, and it states that if the numbers of leads and bights can be divided by a common number, it won’t work. At least, not with a single cord. For example, it’s not possible to make a Turk’s Head with four leads and four bights. Four leads and five bights will work perfectly, though.

Now this, I can tell from the droop of your eyelids, is way more than you wanted to know. Relax. You really don’t need to bother your little mind with it. It’s easier just to follow the instructions in the book. And then sit back and wait for the luck that will surely follow. I promise.

Today’s Thought
Have but luck, and you will have the rest; be fortunate, and you will be thought great.
—Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Tailpiece
“Why are you stopping here?”
“This is Lovers’ Lane.”
“I suppose this is your ‘out of gas’ routine.”
“No, no, this is my ‘hereafter’ routine.”
“What’s that?”“Well, if you’re not here after what I’m here after, you’ll be here after I’m gone.

Snobby yachtie knottery

MIKE REED, A KNOWLEDGEABLE friend of mine, walked up to my boat the other day and inspected the main halyard. “Isn’t that a buntline hitch?” he said.

“Oh yes,” I said quickly. “How clever of you to know that.”

As a matter of fact, at that time I couldn’t have told you the difference between a buntline hitch and a cow’s backside. When I looked at the way I’d tied the halyard to the metal clip, it looked as if I’d tied a clove hitch backwards by accident. Anyway, I now know what a buntline hitch is and I have added it to my vast repertoire of useful knots for yachts.

A few nights later I was manning a table at a meeting of our Corinthian yacht club. The subject for the evening was knots, and several of us were demonstrating individual knots, the ones most used on small sailboats.

I was given the sheet bend to demonstrate. It’s a knot I don’t trust to stay in place, so I wasn’t too thrilled to be delegated the sheet bend, although I’m told it’s one of the first knots described in The Ashley Book of Knots, that massive tome of knottery that I’ve never been able to afford. But at least I know how to do the sheet bend and to warn people to make sure both free ends stick out on the same side.

I needn’t have worried about being forced to recommend a knot I wasn’t too happy with. Only two people came to my table to enquire after the sheet bend, and I warned both of them to do a double sheet bend instead. The others all came along to watch me do my famous “instant bowline,” a trick that makes a non-slip loop in the end of a line with two flicks of the wrist. It’s not actually a true bowline, but it’s pretty close, and those who are mesmerized by the action of creating it never seem to examine its construction too closely.

All this got me to thinking about the snobbery of yachtie knottery and how few knots you really need. One of my favorite books, A Manual for Small Yachts, by R. D. Graham and J. E. H. Tew (Blackie, London, 1946) is quite adamant that only nine knots are essential: overhand knot, reef knot, figure-of-eight knot, clove hitch, rolling hitch, round turn and two half-hitches, fisherman’s (or anchor) bend, sheet bend, and the bowline.

I would knock the overhand knot off that list and substitute a double sheet bend for the single sheet bend. Otherwise, I have to agree. But, in fact, if you are not a natural knot nut, and have trouble understanding those diagrams that show strands weaving themselves over and under and around and behind and all over until they finally disappear up their own fundamental orifices, then I think you’ll be relieved to hear that you can probably do almost everything you need to on a boat with just two knots, two hitches, and one bend — five in all:

► Anchor (or fisherman’s) bend
► Reef knot
► Bowline
► Rolling hitch
► Clove hitch

Finally, if you really are severely knot-challenged, a confirmed fumbler from way back, and would just like to get one knot right every time, practice the round turn and two half hitches. It’s actually two round turns and two half hitches, but don’t let that put you off. There’s hardly anything you can’t do with that knot. It might look a bit bulky and inappropriate for some applications, but it’s safe, it’s sure, and nobody’s going to accuse you of being a knot snob.

Today’s Thought
O Time, thou must untangle this, not I;
It is too hard a knot for me t’untie.
—Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

Tailpiece
“I’ve just sold my second novel.”
“Great! What did you use for the plot?”
“The film version of my first novel.”