Mooring knots, what are the main ones you need to know

Giving time to a cable on a bollard or tying a mooring knot should be to a sailor like lifting the cup for the coffee drinker. A simple and natural gesture. Even the “very good” ones, however, often make the mistake of using for mooring knots invented instead for quite different uses. Typical (but incorrect) is the example of securing the mooring line with a gassa d’amante, a knot designed instead expressly to tighten sails securely without ruining the fabric.

Mooring nodes, the characteristics

The essence of good mooring knots can be summarized as follows:

• The knot should never untie except (and very easily!) when desired, even if the line is strongly tensioned. This is to be able to leave the mooring with extreme speed should an emergency make it necessary, which is impossible with, for example, a lover’s halyard under tension because it can only be untied if the sheet is let go.
• The node must allow the top to work to its full potential. So as much as possible by traction, that is, without too much low-angle curvature. It is noteworthy that gas is also penalized for this reason. The locking knot reduces the breaking load by a factor of 4.

Mooring knots – One vault and two half-necks

The simplest of mooring knots, and also one of the fastest and safest ever, is undoubtedly the one called once and two half-necks (it also has other names, but this is the most common): you make the line go around (a “turn”) the bollard, ring or mooring bricola (an operation that is already sufficient to hold the boat securely) and then two half-necks on the part of the cable that will be under tension.

As can be seen in the image above the line definitely works under tension, as long as its diameter is at least four times smaller than that of the bollard on which it is wrapped. The two half-necks, on the other hand, ensure that the knot is perfectly tight and at the same time can be easily and quickly untied when desired, even under maximum strain.

Mooring knots – Spoken knot

II spoken knot (Figure figure below) is the other classic knot for mooring operations, most commonly used for securing fenders to dredges. It is made up of two paired and crossed half-necks, so that both the side of the live line and the leader remain inside the half-necks. Note that the spoken knot is identical to the two half-necks seen earlier, but while the spoken knot is executed to tighten a line around an object, when we speak of two half-necks we expressly mean that the locking knot is executed on the sleeper of the same cable.

The spoken node can also be confused with the wolf’s mouth (Figure below), but in this case the half-necks are not crossed but paired and opposite, so that sleeper and current (i.e., side of the line that will go under tension and leader we use to technically tie the knot) both come out of the same side of the knot. Wolf’s mouth is for all intents and purposes a slipknot, while speech is not.

Care should be taken that the spoken knot tends to loosen if the cable is not always under tension (e.g., if due to undertow the boat rhythmically loosens and stretches the mooring), so it is advisable to make two half-necks of blocking as seen for the previous knot. On the other hand, no problem with tying fenders, as their own weight makes the line stay taut and the knot does not untie.

On the cleat

To attach the line to the bollard or cleat on deck, the procedure shown in the sequence below should be followed (to be read clockwise starting at the first picture in the upper left corner).

After stringing the line, you make it go a full circle around the base (this, as already mentioned, is enough to effortlessly hold even considerable tension), then give it a turn by crossing it in the shape of an 8 and choking it with a half-neck, that is, making the line go around itself.

Often out of haste or inexperience the tying shown in the figure below is done, but it is wrong because it quickly tends to loosen as soon as the line goes under heavy tension.

Tips

In setting up mooring lines on a bollard ashore to which several boats are already tied, always take care to place them under those of others, especially if you think you will be the last to give up your moorings. If one intends to stay a short time at the dock, then it is preferable to run the doubled lines directly, so as to then make the maneuver of setting sail much easier.

• Read also: mooring alone in high winds
• Read also: dock mooring with “spring”
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