Page 178 - Adlard Coles "The Knot Bible"

LASHINGS

Figure-eight lashing
KNOT SCORE
Shackles are normally used to join one eye to another. But there are Strength
situations when a shackle just isn’t appropriate: if you need to adjust the Security
distance between the eyes, or if you want to be able to cut the eyes apart Diffi culty Tying
Diffi culty Untying
quickly in an emergency, or if you just don’t have the right size shackle.
Usefulness

In these cases, a figure-eight lashing is a perfect substitute.

1 Tie one end of the line to one 2 Weave the twine through the two 3 The number of turns depends
eye using a bowline (page 112), eyes in a fi gure-eight shape. on the strength required and the
an angler’s loop (page 119) or, as thickness of the line.
pictured, a soft eye splice (page 265).

KNOT KNOW-HOW 4 Tighten the turns and

finish off with several
Lashings played an important role when ‘frapping’ half hitches.
large ships were raising anchor. As the
anchor hawser was often too thick to go
around the capstan, a messenger rope was
lashed to it and used to haul the hawser
in. The lashings were called ‘nippers’, and
the youngest crew members were given
the job of tying and untying them. From
there, the term ‘nipper’ for a young boy
made its way into our everyday language.

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