PIONEERING BASICS

• Becket: The eye of a pulley or block, or an eye in the end of a rope.
• Bend: A knot which is used to tie two ropes together by their ends.
• Bight: The portion of a rope between the end and the standing part; also any slack part of the rope, particularly in the form of a loop or partial loop.
• Cheese: A turn, or number of flat turns in a coil of rope.
• Cheesing: Is the act of coiling a rope flat.
• Cordage The general term for all twisted or laid-up rope, irrespective of size or material.
• End: The termination of the rope, or the free part towards the termination of the rope with which a knot is being tied.
• Frapping: Crossing turns taken in a lashing or on the leads of a tackle to both tighten and secure them.
• Halyards: Ropes for hoisting sails or flags.
• Hawser: A plain laid rope, laid up right-handed, large enough for mooring or towing. The size may vary between 7 and 60mm in circumference.
• Hitch: A knot which fastens a rope to another object, eg. A spar, post or ring, or to another rope, other than by the ends.
• Lanyard: A small rope for securing the end of a stay, or a “handle” for almost anything portable such as a whistle or a knife.
• Lashing: Binding two or more objects together, usually spars, by means of turns of rope.
• Marlinespike: A metal tool with a knobbed end and tapering to a sharp point. Used for tightening seizings, and for opening strands when splicing. Also may be used to loosen knots.
• Reef Points: Short lengths of rope sewn through a sail by means of which the sail can be tied down neatly when “reefed”, using reef knots.
• Round Turn: When the two parts of a loop cross, the rope is said to have “taken a turn.” If one part is taken round for a second time, it is a “round turn” and taken round a third time, it is “two round turns.”
• Seize: To bind or lash, using “small stuff” (eg. waxed twine, sisal, etc), so as to secure the end of a standing part after making a knot, or to make an eye, or to draw two ropes together.
• Shear Legs: Sometimes called shears. Two spars lashed together at one end and splayed at the other to form a triangle: usually a ledger (a third spar) is lashed across the butts a little above ground level. Used for lifting weights.

Not so many years ago, any rope you used would have been either hemp (including manila) or sisal, produced from natural fibres. Today, we still have these ropes, and sisal is still the cheapest to buy, but there is now a range of ropes produced from synthetic fibres, which will often show greater advantage in use.

Of the natural fibres, manila is undoubtedly the finest, followed by hemp. Sisal is a good general purpose rope, but it deteriorates more rapidly than hemp or manila; it sinks in water; and when wet, looses some of its strength.

The size of ropes is normally quoted in terms of diameter, given in millimetres, and in most cases, rope is bought in coils of 220m, expressed as a mass. For example, a coil of 10mm rope would weight 15 kg, while a coil of 26mm rope would weigh 109 kg.

Most of the rope you will handle will be three-stranded, laid up right-handed. Generally, the strands are built up from yarns of the basic material in random lengths twisted together. Three-stranded rope laid up right-handed is often called “hawser-laid” rope.

Rope is expensive material and should be well looked after. New rope should be strained before use to remove its initial stretch. When not in use, all rope should be properly coiled and stored. Light ropes should be coiled on the floor, the operator standing with his back to the bulk of the rope, and hauling it up through his legs, and laying turns in a clockwise direction. The complete coil should be tied off with small stuff (sisal string) and hung up on a peg, clear of the ground.

Shorter lengths of light rope should be put together in bundles of ten ropes of equal length, and tied at each end with overhand knots.

Wet ropes are particularly susceptible to deterioration unless carefully and thoroughly dried out. The ropes should be coiled as described, in as large turns as possible, and hung in an even, moderate to cool temperature. Never dry them out by heat.

Barrel Hitch This is the simplest and most effective way to sling a barrel in a vertical position. To tie it, place the barrel on the rope, bring the end and standing part to the top of the barrel and make a half-knot (fig 1). Open the half-knot and push the two parts outwards and over the edge of the barrel, as indicated by the arrows in fig 1. Bring up the end and standing part and make a bowline (fig 2) and your sling is complete.

Blackwall Hitch A simple yet secure method of fastening a rope in a hook. It should only be used when the diameter of the rope is nearly enough to fill the mouth of the hook. The illustration shows clearly how it is made. The rope can be taken round again to get two bights in the mouth of the hook and so forming a Double Blackwall Hitch, but it is doubtful whether any advantage is gained.

The Carrick Bend / The Josephine Knot This is probably the finest end you can make: it is the nearest approach to the perfect knot. Its only fault is that it is rather bulky. It is used mainly for hawsers and heavy ropes but it is also widely used as a decorative knot. It is important to remember that, for the knot to be correct, the two ends must emerge from the knot at diagonally opposite points. To tie it, make a single turn in the end of tone rope, the end passing under the standing part. Lay the other rope under the turn (18), take the end round over the standing part of the first rope, under the end, down into the turn, under its own part and up and out of the knot, ie. Carefully follow the arrows in fig 18 to arrive at fig 19. There are two ways of completing the knot: everything may be drawn up snugly when you will have a solid, squarish knot as in fig 21, or it can be closed and the ends seized to the standing parts (20) which is the method most used at sea. Ashley states it is possible the nearest thing we have to a perfect bend. It does not easily slip, not even if the rope is wet. And it is always easy to untie, also after a heavy load. If used as a Hawser bend in heavy material it is always seized and parcelled to save wear.