Rope handling


One cleat, one job – The practice of securing one rope on top of another on mooring cleats ashore or on board is to be avoided. It’s even chances that when you need to adjust one of two ropes made up on the same cleat, yours will be the one underneath. If the upper line is loaded up, you’re in an impossible situation. Always try to find a spare cleat, a winch barrel, a windlass drum, or anything else that is strong.


One rope, one job Using a rope to double as a bow line and bow spring, for example, is unseamanlike. It may be convenient, but it makes securing alongside far more cumbersome. When its bight is made fast, converting one shore line into two, all manner of nonsense results when one end is loaded and the other needs adjustment. ‘One rope one job, one cleat one rope’, and the boat is under perfect control no matter what may happen.


Ends ashore Big ships always take the ends of their mooring lines ashore. The reasons for doing this are equally sound for smaller craft. First, no untidy mess is left on the dock for people to trip over, to kick inadvertently into the water, or even to hack off and steal. Secondly, ‘ends ashore’ means that a single length of line secures the ship to that cleat or bollard. Third and perhaps most importantly, the end can be made up into a bowline and looped over the shore cleat. If more than one rope falls to the cleat, the loops can be dipped through one another which allows them to be lifted independently, however this cannot be done if they have been cleated off. To say that a bowline cannot be let off under load in this context is false because, so long as the bight of the line is secured on board in a seamanlike manner, it can always be tended, no matter what the conditions. By slacking this away, no circumstances exist where the bowline could not be lifted off.


Finally, and quite simply, once this system is in place and a crew understand and have practised it, it remains by far the easiest way to do the job.


66 | MANUAL OF SEAMANSHIP


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