A great knot for tying up your boat

A "globber." Don't tie this one!

Knot tying seems to be one of those lost skills, like butter churning or log cabin building. Yet, it is still something outdoorsmen and women need to know, if for no other reason than to tie up their boat to the dock.
We see a lot of "knots" like the one at the top right. I call this the "glob knot" because its maker kept threading the rope around and around, in and out of loops, over and under until he either ran out of rope or it was time for supper. This, actually, is a rather small globber. I've seen some nearly the size of muskrat houses.

First Half-Hitch

Two Half-Hitches

Besides the waste of time and life it takes to make such a "knot" there is also the equally-wasted time in untying it. Sometimes it just can't be done and you have to resort to your knife or you just aren't going fishing any more. Equally frustrating is when the number of times the rope was threaded one way equals the number of times threaded the other way. As soon as the boat puts any pressure against the knot it just falls apart as if by magic and the boat sails off down the lake.
So, I offer a simple alternative, the steps for tying it are shown in the two lower photos. Each step is called a half-hitch and the completed knot is known simply as Two Half-Hitches.
It takes somewhere between one and two seconds to tie, won't loosen and won't jam together so tightly that you can't untie it, at least not if you take out your boat at least once a week.
Just in case it isn't clear from the two photos how to tie this knot, it goes like this:
1. Pass the free end of the rope (the other end is already permanently tied to the boat) through the top of the ring and out the bottom
2. Pass the free end over the top of the rope and back through the loop you just made
3. Repeat the step on the boat side of the first hitch
If you don't get a finished product that looks like Step 2, you haven't gone over the top of the rope in each step, i.e. you went over the top for the first hitch and under the rope for the second or vice versa.
This knot is so simple, it can actually be tied with one hand. Try that this summer and listen for the gasps of awe from the womenfolk!
And to satisfy the purists, boats don't technically have "ropes" they have "lines."
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