Grog's Boating Knots Index
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Welcome:
These animated knots are primarily for boaters, but many are useful for anyone who uses rope and values safety. The knots can be selected from the index on the left, or by their pictures above, or from a page which describes their various uses.
Applications:
The nautical knots used when berthing a large vessel, docking your yacht, tying up dinghy painters, and managing sails are all aimed at safety and reliability. The emphasis for boating knots is on reliability matched with the ability to untie each knot fairly easily.
Bitter End
In many boating knots it is convenient to talk about the Standing End - which takes the strain, and the Bitter End - the loose end in your hand. This name arises from securing hawsers on large ships. After being winched tight, the strain on the hawser was temporarily taken with a second rope attached to the hawser with a Rolling Hitch. The hawser was taken off the winch and the end, now loose, was then transferred to the Bitts - hence the name Bitter End. Bitts are the strong posts (see picture on right) to which the rope is secured - using figure of eight turns.
Disclaimer: Activities involving ropes are potentially hazardous. Lives may be at risk - possibly your own. Considerable attention and effort have been made to ensure that these descriptions are accurate. However, many critical factors cannot be controlled, including: the choice of materials; the age, size, and condition of ropes; and the accuracy with which these descriptions have been followed. For this reason no responsibility is accepted for incidents arising from the use of this material.
