Tie One On

I learned my knots the hard way as a young crew member on a two-person delivery. The captain asked for a rolling hitch. When he received rolling eyes instead, he reacted by drilling me practically to tears. I was sure he was a sadist, demanding bowlines behind my back and clove hitches on everything in sight. He had me tensioning and loosening lashings with rolling hitches repeatedly for a week. But by the end of the trip, I could reach around the back of a piling and throw in that bowline as easily as tying my shoes. I learned it takes repetition for knot tying to become second nature.

This is not a how-to-tie-knots column. Instead, it’s