Home / Seamanship / Knots and ropework on board
Six knots, and what each one is actually for
You do not need thirty knots. You need six, and you need them to work in the dark with cold fingers. What matters is not how tightly a knot holds, but whether it still comes undone after it has taken a load.
Bowline
A fixed loop that holds under load and can still be untied afterwards. The most important knot on board, and the one everybody really should be able to tie blind.
Figure eight
The stopper at the end of a sheet so it cannot run out through the block. Small, unremarkable, and the reason a genoa sheet does not fly away in a gust.
Clove hitch
Quick around a post or a rail, ideal for fenders. But it only holds under steady pull: if the load varies, it walks.
Sheet bend
Joins two lines, including lines of different thickness. A reef knot explicitly cannot do this: it is only for two ends of equal diameter and never under load.
Anchor bend, rolling hitch, timber hitch
The working hitches for anchors, halyards and towing. They bite under pull and come free as soon as the load is off.
Whipping and eye splice
An end is whipped so it cannot unlay, a loop is spliced rather than knotted. A splice keeps most of the breaking load, a knot takes a good deal of it away.
What this has to do with insurance
Rope ages through sun, salt and chafe, and you can hardly see that ageing from the outside. Wear and tear is normally not covered under hull insurance, and neither is a failure that follows from it. What applies to your contract is set out in your own policy wording. In practice: halyards and sheets do not end with the season, they end in the year they go hard and bleached.
