Knot All Tied Up

MS and the art of the bowline

Why was the rope so popular at the party?

Because it knew how to hang

Why did everyone think the knot was inappropriate?

Because it was too twisted

Why do ropes make good detectives?

Because they unravel mysteries

A rope walks into a bar and orders a drink. The bartender kicks him out as the bar doesn’t serve ropes. The rope goes outside, ties itself up and walks back in. The bartender asks, “aren’t you the rope I just kicked out?” The rope replies, “Nope, I’m a frayed knot.”

I am a frayed knot for sure. Totally twisted but not in the way I am supposed to be, and it is freaking me out!

See, my special guy Peter bought a sailboat. He has spent much of his life sailing and decided to bite the nautical bullet and get himself his own boat.

As the granddaughter of commercial fishermen who loves heritage and a great seafaring story, I was on board. I have a thing for sailors or, at least, fishermen. (He fishes too-lucky me!)

But my experience at sea mostly involves annual parties on rusty, creaky fishing draggers or fun excursions on little speed boats. I have never really worked on the water, but I do enjoy it and have never gotten seasick. 

I have learned a thing or two from other captains in my life. It was my dad who taught me that the only way to get a speedboat started was by cursing at it in Portuguese. If you didn’t know that, then consider this my gift to you.

Filho da puta is especially good to get your outboard engine to tun over.

I also learned from another captain how to spot whales in the ocean.

“If a huge mass three times the size of the boat suddenly leaps out of the water, it may be a whale.”

The problem is that I have no sailing experience. There was a kid’s sailing program in my little town, but I was always too busy working to go to it. And by working, I mean selling shells to finance my penny candy habit. Those jawbreakers and smarties don’t come cheap.

Penny candy indeed.

Still, I wanted to learn and last summer I was able to experience some sailing. Peter’s boat is named A Good Hair Day, and it is a J24. I learned that it is 24 feet in length which is a wicked coincidence since it is called a J24.

Funny how that works out.

I went to the club where it lives and personally put it in the water, using a crane no less, all by myself!

I did this by pushing the little button on the crane when the guy at the club told me too. AND, I stopped pushing the button when he told me to stop.

I even steered for a bit when we took the boat on the bay. A Good Hair Day has a flaw that instead of a ship’s wheel like other boats it has this long stick instead. Weird. And Peter calls himself a sailor… 

I guess it works though because we didn’t hit anything despite the fact that Peter kept telling me to move the stick in the opposite direction or where we were trying to go. He definitely needs a ships wheel, maybe for his birthday.

The problem came when I was at the dock, holding the line which I already knew was to keep the boat from drifting away. Peter’s brother, also an experienced sailor, tied the bow line and I told him that he needed to tie the stern as “Peter hasn’t taught me knots yet.”

“Taught you knots,” was his brother’s reply, “didn’t you grow up on the Cape? You don’t know how to tie up a boat?”

Ahhhh….. he had me.

In my defense, I have a much younger brother who is a natural mariner, very smart and was put in charge of all important boating responsibilities.

He was nine.

So perhaps I needed to learn more about sailing than just pushing a button or pulling on a stick.

This spring I want to learn how to tie knots so I too, can tie A Good Hair Day’s stern line and maybe, if I get really good at it, learn to tie her bow line too!!!

But knots are freaking hard!!

Peter showed me a basic bowline knot and gave me a rope to practice with. And I couldn’t do it!

But damn, I was determined so I checked out YouTube for all the best knot tying learning skills and watched short tutorials, long tutorials, tutorials with sailors and tutorials with kids. I watched tutorials with pictures and tutorials with step-by-step hand motions. I spent hours studying how to tie a simple bowline knot.

Eventually I figured it out and practiced. I was so happy!

During a Facebook video chat, I made a big, proud presentation of it and practiced that too. I showed Peter the rope without the knot and made it like a magic act. Abracadabra and ta da- my bowline knot!

And Peter said it was wrong.

He gently informed me that, “you know, there are YouTube videos that will show you how to tie one.”

Like an unproperly knotted knot I snapped, “I watched them!”

“Sometimes pictures are more helpful,” he said.

“I know, I looked at them too!” I cried, totally lashing out.

When we were next together Peter calmly walked me through the bowline knot again. But how was I to learn when, as I was trying to pay attention to how he was moving his hands, he started some stupid story about a rabbit.

“The rabbit comes out of the hole and goes around the tree.”

What tree? I had a rope, where the hell was the tree?

At one point, I made a loop too big, and Peter said, “not so far, the rabbit is a timid little bugger.”

Now we are talking about bugs???

Does this story ever end and what about this bowline knot????

My grandfather came to America as an expert net-maker so why **&#@&((% can’t I learn to tie this ridiculous, basic knot?

Eventually, we figured out that there might be three problems.

1. Peter is left-handed so everything he was trying to show me I was seeing backwards. This might explain my trouble with the YouTube videos as well. 

2. Multiple sclerosis often makes things hard to learn, especially when you are looking at those things backwards. 

And 3. Rabbits and trees don’t belong on the water.  No wonder I was confused.

Once we figured out these things, I did actually tie the knot, several times as a matter of fact. Then we moved on to a figure eight knot which wasn’t too hard.

Then Peter went home, and I just as quickly forgot how to tie both knots. It’s a miracle I can remember how to tie my own shoes. 

But I keep trying with the knots.

What else can we do when we face knots, or MS or life or life with knots and MS?

We try and hope the trying will be worth it in the end, with perhaps maybe a good sail day on A Good Hair Day.

I insist on being at least a decent sailor. And if it turns out I’m knot (see what I did there,) I’ve got a few good curse words to get the boat under way…

What did one misbehaved rope say to the other?

Don’t be so knotty

How come one rope didn’t beat the other rope in the race?

Because they tied

I would love to tell you some more rope jokes, but I want to leave you hanging…

Thank you to the world wide web for some knot joke inspiration. Those I learned just fine…