The Dreaded Overhand Knot

[CruisingCouple]

The people that previously owned our Legend 37 only knew how to tie one kind of knot. For standard duty, do it twice. If any doubt that she's gonna hold, three times. For severe duty, the quad.

Jib sheets, mainsheet, anchor rodes, fenders, you name it. My poor wife spent 3 hours today trying to straighten it all out. Some of them she was able to get undone. Some she had to cut.

[SkiprJohn]

Sorry to hear that! So many sailors forget that they need to learn knots.

My friend Martin showed me a trick I had not learned in 50 years of sailing and that is to dip the line in water if you can and the knot is easier to get undone. I went below to get a fid while he dipped the knot in water and was able to untie it while I was wasting time looking for one of my tools.

Good luck in getting all of those untied.

kind regards,

[CruisingCouple]

I'll tell my wife to try that dipping in water. Some of them, like mooring lines, they must've only ever tied to one dock and the water level never changed. They tied loops in both ends of the mooring line with overhand knots - twice in each end. It renders the line pretty much useless unless you can get them out. And you hate to cut the end off because it's a perfectly good line otherwise.

Pretty frustrating. It's good my wife has more patience with it that I would.

[bobconnie]

My deck knife has a readly available marline spike! Yall might try something like this ! It sure helps to have one handy! Also a few fids of different sizes are nice to have and are cheap ! Just my 2 cents

[CruisingCouple]

bobconnie, my wife was using her deck knife (cheap one from West Marine) with a marlinespike in it. But some of the knots are pretty mean

We don't have any fids but probably should pick up a set.

[jackdale]

There is a reason it is called "learning the ropes." Learning the knots is also crucial.

[Steve Bean]

A rope that gets wet with salt water and dried again and again gets full of salt and gets stiff. Long soaking in fresh water may help more than just a quick wetting.

[CruisingCouple]

Thanks Steve, that makes sense. My wife was able to get most of the knots out and done properly. A few she cut that were tied with cheap polypropylene rope on fenders and stuff and just would not come out. But no big loss on that rope - we tossed it anyway and replaced it.

We hope we never see anything like that again.

I've been working on the steering system in the boat the last few days. Assuming I get my parts for that when they said they'll be shipped, and a few other minor items that need repair, and our new boat will be getting closer to ready for being splashed. Been working on it for 6 weeks full time.

I want to find an arch for it to mount solar panels on. I've priced a few and came away with severe sticker shock

[JPA Cate]

FWIW,

If you can, when you design the mounts for the solar panels, make them easily adjustable, you'll get more output if you can aim them to take advantage of morning and afternoon sun. And if it's easy to do, you'll make it a habit.

Ann

[Nicholson58]

I usually can get them apart using a vice grip and a channel lock. A fid helps. Water is a good idea too.

[CruisingCouple]

Originally Posted by Ann T. Cate

If you can, when you design the mounts for the solar panels, make them easily adjustable, you'll get more output if you can aim them to take advantage of morning and afternoon sun. And if it's easy to do, you'll make it a habit.

Hi Ann, thanks for that tip. If I can find a reasonably priced stainless steel arch, then I'll have a better idea of how solar panels can be mounted on it. I want to make the mount fairly strong for wind load too, so adding an extra panel might be better than trying to make them adjustable and losing our panels in a storm. A decent arch should be able to hold three 250w panels with no problem. In the end I'm afraid to do it right we're going to have to cough up the money for a well built arch, and they're not cheap.