The Bowline Knot : Sailing Lessons Online

Video Transcript

" Hello, my name is Kevin Winsley. I’m with Offshore Sailing School and now on Expert Village I’m going to show you how to tie a bowlin. A bowlin knot is something that you use to perhaps tie a line to a sail. So I’m going to use this piece of the chair to show you how to tie this. Take the tail end of the line, so you get over the top and bring it down underneath. The next thing we have to do is make a loop in the standing line. The standing line is the part of the line that might be attached to a boat for example, so you make a little loop in the standing line just like that and make sure the standing line comes out behind the loop, not in front like that. That’s in front and there’s the hind which is what we want and then we’re going to take the tail end and the tail end is going to come up through the hole. It’s going to go around the back of the standing line and then back down the hole again. Then we snug it all up and there we have our bowlin and the beauty of a bowlin is you can put it under tremendous load and it will not slip or come undone but it’s also very easy to untie and all you need to do is turn the knot over and then break the back of the knot and that makes it very easy to slip the tail out."