Learn The Art Of Tying Knots For Boating
To knot or not to knot... that is the question! Do you know the difference between an albright and a woggle or an alpine butterfly and a west country whipping? Probably not. The good news is that you don't need to. As a traveller of the inland waterways there are really only two knots you need to know, but you really do need to know them. Let me give you an example of what can happen when you don't.
When I was seventeen (I know, I must have a very good memory - three male friends and I drove to somewhere near Great Yarmouth to the start of our week long narrowboat holiday. After half and hour's instructiion we were allowed out on the Norfolk broads on our own.
By five o'clock we thought we had travelled far enough so "parked" our new toy along a canal bank near a likely looking pub. Six hours later and a little the worse for wear, we staggered through the driving rain through the pub garden back to where we were sure the boat was moored.
It wasn't there!
Of course we weren't thinking straight so after a brief panic and a longer shouting match we raced up and down the bank searching for our new home. After ten minutes we found the boat. Actually "found the boat" isn't quite right. We hadn't lost it at all. The idiot responsible for tying the stern mooring line (me) hadn't done a very good job so the boat had swung one hundred and eighty degrees downstream and had come to rest alongside another narrowboat. Of course it was very difficult to see it in the driving rain.
The essential narrowboat knot
If I had known either of the two most useful narrowboat knots we would have been spared the heartache all those years ago. Of course, my experience resulted in nothing more that a minor irritation but there have been countless cases of boats drifting away from their moorings because of poor knot tying... sometimes with disastrous consequences. Fortunately for you, it's now very easy to learn these knots.
The two essential narrowboat knots are "the round turn and two half hitches" and "the cleat hitch". The former is shorn on the left. The latter is below. The one on the left is for attaching your mooring rope to a post or a ring and the cleat hitch. The cleat hitch, strangely enough, secures a rope to a cleat. As you will invariably tie your narrowboat to or from a post, cleat or mooring ring these two knots will keep you out of trouble.
Essential knot number two
You can probably work out how to tie the knots just by looking at the diagrams but, to make life even easier for you, there's a marvelous website (full details on the Living On A Narrowboat web site - link below) which demonstrates how to tie every knot you've ever heard of. In fact, there are 120 knots listed. All of them are animated and very clear and easy to understand. It's a great site... and it's free.
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