January 13th, 2013 - Learn how to tie a bowline

My dad is a boat nut.  He has worked for a shipyard for more than twenty-five years, starting off his career drafting plans for submarines and working his way to designing destroyers all in a computer.  His latest project is a combat ship that I had the pleasure of touring before it set sail.  The word “impressive” doesn’t quite do it justice.

Because of his chosen career, my dad has a love for all things nautical.  He loves Wooden Boat magazine, and he even competed in a competition in which he built a boat from a pile of wood and sailed it in less than a weekend.  It didn't sink, which to me now is a remarkable accomplishment.  When it happened I was in 8th grade and I was bored to tears.

Papa Bear tried his best to get me excited about what it was that he did with his days.  When I went into high school, we even started building our own boat together, a wooden kayak wrapped in water-proofed canvas.  It was never finished, and it’s one of my biggest regrets that it sat there uncompleted.  I wish I had found the time in my busy teenage schedule to build that boat with my dad and to take it out on the water.

Sadly, my DeLorean has been on the fritz, and I haven’t been able to go back and tell my younger self to cut the shit just yet.  But not to worry, we have our top men working on it now...top men.

So as a small gesture of remorse, I’d like to do something nautical today in honor of my dad.  Since I live in a small apartment in the middle of downtown Greensboro, there were not many opportunities to build and launch a ship of my own.  I could, however, learn how to tie a maritime knot.  And there is no better maritime knot than the bowline.

The bowline is known as the “King of knots” because of its importance and wide use (it's the knot that Quint is teaching Chief Brody when the shark shows up).  It's often used for small craft sailing, and has also been used as a rescue knot.  It's also easy to tie and untie.  I'm counting on the easy to tie part, because my knowledge of knots does not go much further beyond tying my shoes.

There's an easy way to learn how to tie a bowline.  First, you make a rabbit hole:

Then, the rabbit comes out of it's hole:

The rabbit goes around the tree:

And then goes back into it's hole, where it ends up looking something like this:

I'm in no way ready for a master class in seamanship.  It's going to take a few more knots until I can calculate my speed in knots (that's a boat joke...ha).  But I'm excited to learn more, and I can only hope to one day put these new skills to use.  We never finished that boat, Dad.  When do you want to start?