Professional boatmen, lobstermen, and fishermen are never eternally shifting and changing their ballast: having found the "happy medium," they let it alone for the season. It is only the amateur that is continually sailing his yacht upon her "beam-ends," or watching with the utmost anxiety the fast approaching squall, for which the professional cares naught.
KNOTS.
We cannot get along on board of a yacht without knowing how to make a few useful knots.
The great beauty of a knot, in a sailor's estimation, is not only to hold well, but to be easily untied or cast off after having been subjected to a great strain. Of all knots the bowline is, perhaps, the king, because it can be submitted to a strain that will part the rope, before slipping or giving in the least (and this holds true of the largest hawser, as well as the smallest line); and, after this strain is removed, it can be untied as easily as a knot in one's summer neck-tie. It can be very quickly made, and is useful in more situations than any other, and can be used to replace many others. It is used to fasten a rope in a hurry to the ring of an anchor, or to make fast the painter of a tender through a ring-bolt securely for towing, and yet so as to be easily cast off; fastening sinkers upon fish-lines, or the end of any rope in a position where it will bear strain. Flags may be bent on with this knot, although sailors have a signal-halliard knot, as they also have a peculiar bent for fastening a hawser to an anchor; but no knot can be used in an emergency, in place of all these, like the bowline; and, if one can have knowledge of but a few, let the bowline be the first acquired. It will be useful also on shore, and throughout one's life, making as a matter of past record, to be eternally sunk in oblivion, those awful knots that never would come undone again. Next to the bowline in importance is, perhaps, the bend called two half-hitches, or the clove hitch, by means of which one can secure with the end of a rope almost any thing. This hitch is called two half-hitches when it is made upon its own standing part, and a clove hitch when made around any other thing, such as a spar; but both are the same in principle.
The third knot that must be acquired is what is called the square knot, or reef knot, and is used in reefing the sails. The reef-points being tied in square knots can be easily untied when needed: if improperly tied in a granny knot, they either jam or fly open in the height of the gale,—when one desires them most to hold on.
With these three knots one can get along nicely, and it is advisable to obtain a knowledge of how to make them without delay.
TO MAKE A BOWLINE KNOT.
Take the end of the rope in your right hand, and the standing part in your left; lay the end over the standing part; then with your left hand turn the bight of the standing part from you, and over the end part, by a peculiar turn of the wrists, which comes only by practice, forming what is called a goose-neck on the standing part; then lead the end, which is already enclosed in the goose-neck, under and around the standing part, and down through the same goose-neck; and haul the parts taut.