Double Overhand Knot
Category: Stopper knot
How to tie:
Well, we got snow today, making it a very white Christmas in Texas! Unfortunately, I had to work today, but that’s part of the careers I’ve chosen. When I was in the Air Force, there were very few Christmases when I wasn’t deployed overseas. And crime doesn’t stop on the holidays…so I work most of them now, too. As a result of all this,
I had very intimate knowledge of the figure eight loop knot since we literally used it every time we attached ourselves to the climbing line. We’d tie a figure eight loop on the rope end the climber is to be attached to and then hook that into two opposing carabiners attached to the climbing harness.
I just finished reading a great book, An Embarrassment of Mangoes: A Caribbean Interlude by Anne Vanderhoof. The book was recommended to me by one of our blog readers. This is the true story of the author and her husband who took two years away from work and had the adventure of a lifetime cruising in the Caribbean. The book is filled with excitement and details of their travels and is a very easy read. At the end of each chapter the
It kind of felt like Christmas when I checked my mail today! I had ordered these books a few days ago to use them for research and training. One of them, How to Read a Nautical Chart: A Complete Guide to Understanding and Using Electronic and Paper Charts was mentioned on another sailing blog I follow and it caught my eye very quickly due to the nature of the book.
Since I’ve got no sailing experience [yet] and I have no idea how to read a nautical chart, I thought it’d be a great idea to jump in and give it a shot. This book interested me, too, because it mentioned
I’ve read that once you rid yourself of day to day distractions (traffic, mortgages, work spaces, a million people cramping your personal space, etc., etc.) then you are better able to understand the world and how it works so much easier and intuitively.
Here’s another post that doesn’t have much to do with the actual “sailing” or “cruising” part of sailing or cruising, but rather something that I think has influenced the sailing / cruising culture.
I read an article and listened to a podcast by Paul Mason, a BBC correspondent who interviewed Professor Manuel Castells, a noted world sociologist. During that interview, Castells talks about a new kind of capitalism growing from counter-cultures. He’s referring to a great number of people who have taken on the viewpoint [some purposely and some through inability] that the important things in life cannot be purchased.
Long story short, I was involved in a fight during the arrest of a man who had just raped a woman.
He didn’t want to go to jail, so I had to convince him otherwise.
Obviously, since seafaring is probably one of the world’s oldest occupations and pastimes, there’s a ton of lore [both good and bad] out there. Here’s a few I’ve found that involve bad luck for sailors.