How To Tie A Bowline

Jeeeeeeezzzzzeeeeee!!!!!!!! I sound so darn mean in this little video my wife BJ recorded of me. I act a little mean, too. Don't know what to tell you about this. It was a GORGEOUS day. We'd just come back from a nice cruise on the Betty Jane. I'd slurped plenty of water so I was nicely hydrated. And there was a slight breeze blowing across Betty's flying bridge.

Could it be that I'm just turning into a grumpy old guy? Hmmmm, maybe. But I'm pretty passionate about my knots, if you want to know the truth. And I tend to be a tad impatient with boat-prone folks who can't deal with the basics in fairly efficient ways, although I've been told that, from a student's point of view, I'm a fairly patient teacher if the student has plenty of patience as well.

Be that as it may. Mean soundin' and actin' or not, I'm pretty easy to understand on the video I think and if you watch the dang thing a bunch of times while trying to replicate what I'm doing with a piece of your own line, you'll get the hang of it right quick, as we say in the Sunny South.



I learned to tie a bowline this way so many years ago I can't remember who my teacher was. Guess it was either some bosun on a Great Lakes ore carrier or the skipper of a Mississippi River pushboat. In either case, I'm betting the guy was a little rough-and-tumble himself.

Good Luck!