Learn 5 KNOTS for Sailing [Capable Cruising Guides]

[Music] hi my name is emily and i'm aboard sailing vessel temptress my husband and i sail and travel full-time on our boat and today i want to tell you about knots specifically the five knots that we use on our boat to get the job done and i bet two of these knots are nuts that you might not have heard of before so today we're talking about knots if you've ever been to a nautical themed restaurant or bar you've probably seen one of those plaques on a wall somewhere it has 30 different knots on it with turks heads and all these fancy things and people think that if you're going to go sailing you have to learn all these knots but you really don't have to the only knots you need are for basic jobs you might want to put a loop in the end of a rope you might want to put a loop in the middle of a rope you might want to tie two pieces of rope together or keep a rope from going through a hole that it's not supposed to and lastly you might want to tie something to something else maybe you're bringing your dinghy up to a dock or to somebody else's boat and you want to tie it off securely make sure your dinghy is there when you come back if you can do those five things you're in pretty good shape as a sailor and the knots that we use are specifically great for those things they're also great knots because the knots we use are knots that we don't have to think a whole lot about we can kind of tie them without looking at them they're also knots that hold well when you put them under pressure and they're easy to break apart so that when you take the knot out you're left with an undamaged piece of line so those are the criteria that we use to choose the knots that we're doing when you've mastered a knot you will know it because you will be able to know when to use it you will be able to tie it and you'll be able to tie it under pressure when the boat is rocking or something is going wrong and you need to get it done right away so i challenge you as you're going through these five knots you can pause the video you can practice how to tie it make sure that you know how to tie them and time quickly and that you know what they're used for all right not number one is a stopper knot or a figure eight knot when you're on a boat if you've got a line and it's going through a block you want to make sure it doesn't pull out of that block and go crazy so you can't find it so instinctively people usually want to tie an overhand knot pretty easy knot we're all familiar with it right the problem with an overhand knot is that the more tension you put on it the tighter this knot gets and sometimes it becomes nearly impossible to get that knot back out again the other thing is this doesn't really add a ton of width to your line so sometimes you'll have to you know add a second one and it's just not a good knot to use but there's a very easy variation to this that makes it the perfect not to use if you know how to tie an overhand knot all you have to do is give it one extra twist before you put the end in and you have oops you have a figure eight knot you can see it looks like a figure eight that's why it's called a figure eight knot this when you slip it down becomes bigger than an overhand knot and it works really well for keeping lines from going through blocks when they're not supposed to [Music] now let's talk about tying something to something else this is going to come in handy when you're using your dinghy and going to a dock if there's a cleat there you could just use a cleat hitch and tie off but sometimes you don't and sometimes you have to tie off to something something we like to use for that is called a clove hitch and it's super easy to tie this is what a cowboy would use to tie his horse up you put it around whatever you want to tie to put it under put it over pull it through the loop and it looks like a knot that's not very secure but it is secure if you're really concerned about you can tie one more little hitch in the end of it to secure it and it looks a little more secure but it's just fine the way it is this is what we use to tie down our awning we leave a little loop in the end so it pulls right out and we don't take that awning down unless it's like blowing 30 knots so it's quite a secure line so that is a clove hitch [Music] next let's talk about putting a loop in the middle of a piece of line now this line i don't have access to the end but that's not a problem because we're going to tie it right in the middle with something called an alpine butterfly knot this is a great knot for if you go to the hardware store and you buy something you need to strap it down to the top of your car and all you have is twine this is what we use to tie my dinghy down during crossings so what you're going to do if you've ever played cat's cradle it's kind of like that you're going to wrap the rope around your hand three times it'll reach under the first one grab the second one pass it to your middle finger and slide it all over so the only thing you're holding on to is the middle finger and then you pull that is an alpine butterfly knot this is oops you can put another piece of line through this and use it as kind of a lever to give purchase and really pull something down tight which is why we like to use it and of course it follows that rule where there's these little backs you can break and get the knot right out back to nothing so that is an alpine butterfly knot [Music] so [Music] the next thing you might want to do is put two pieces of line together sometimes you've got a 50 foot line and another 50 foot line and you really need 100 feet of line so how do you put them together so that they don't come apart and so that until you want them to come apart that is uh so the way that we do that is with something called a zeppelin knot which might be a new one for some of you the way we do that is i create two fish in the line see how i have a fish here and i'm going to have a fish over here i'm going to make sure that you can see here the tail the shorter end is in front to you and here i want to make sure that the shorter end is in back to you how well you can see that then i'm going to take the one that's in the back and put it in the back and the one in the front in the front and trade them through each side and i get something that looks like this this is a zeppelin knot and it's gonna hold really tightly and keep these two pieces rubbed together remember the other characteristic is we need to be able to get it apart again and you can see it's got this handy little loop one on either side so you just break its back break its back and it comes right apart and that's a zeppelin knot some of you might be saying well can i do a square knot for that and you can but there's a problem with it let me show you so if you tie a square knot here we got a square knot right what happens if anything catches on this square knot you can easily transform it into something like this and something like this which will pull right out that's not what we want so the zeppelin allows you something that's going to stay tight until you decide you want to pull it out [Music] and the very last knot i'm going to show you is a bowline which everybody knows if they're a sailor they all have a different way of tying it i'm going to show you how i tie it and the shortcut way that clark sort of invented to tie both of them work pretty well sometimes in different situations the way i tie a bowline is to wrap it around what i'm going to tie to then i take the standing end standing in sorry and i make a loop in it i think of this standing in as the tree so the tree grows from underground i say a long tree grows from underground so you can see it coming up from underneath the loop rabbit comes up and runs around back down the hole out of sight and that's a bowline tied just right so that's the way i tie a bowline clark's way of tying a bowline is a little bit different but it comes in handy when you have a little bit of prep time but when it comes down to it you have to tie that bowl in really quickly so he does the prep work first he does a little bit of an overhand action here and passes the sanding in loop through it and then all he has to do is put this through the loop and pull on the standing end so the way this works put it on my leg pull this all the way through and then pull that and kind of push it so it goes inside out you'll see that creates a bowline [Music] do [Music] so if you can practice that and just practice all these knots really while you're sailing while you're just sitting you know keep a piece of rope in your pocket if you go to the waiting room or something instead of getting out your cell phone just practice some of these knots with a piece of rope and they'll get really good they'll become sick in nature and make sure you know which ones to use when maybe we'll do that i'll put up a little a few slides at the end here and see if you can match up the right knot with the right [Music] foreign [Music] so if you'd like to learn more about knots there are two resources we can recommend the first one is a book by brian toss called the riggers apprentice ours is actually falling apart we just got a new copy because we've used it so much it's really well illustrated and walks you through step by step how to tie all kinds of different knots even the decorative fancy ones that you don't need but are kind of fun we have wedding rings that we made out of turks heads and other fancy things that we've done on the boat it's kind of a cool hobby to have so check out rigger's apprentice by brian toss we'll put a link in the description and there's also a youtube channel called the paracord guild you can check out he has really great up close videos that walk you through step by step how to tie knots you can slow it down you can speed it up and it's a really great way to learn some knots so check those out and we hope you have fun if you guys want to know more about knots we could do a video about splicing clark is able to do that we could also do a video about whipping which is what you do to contain the end of a line you can melt these but it doesn't always hold very well so we do something called whipping which is a very easy skill to learn as well if you have a favorite knot or some tips about knots please leave them in the comments below give this video a like and a share and as always please subscribe and thank you to all of our patrons for helping us keep everything tied together you guys have a great day and we'll talk to you next week [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Emily & Clark's Adventure

Views: 973,451

Keywords: emily, clark, adventure, temptress, sv temptress, cruising, sailing, sailboat, liveaboard, bahamas, sailing life, boat life, diy, how to, knots, rope, lines, knot, 101, lesson, capable cruising

Id: fvh_LWBaomg

Length: 13min 59sec (839 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 06 2021