Advice on best knot for piling overnight

K

Kehaar

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exMember
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Oct 11, 2003
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12312
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Hello, my situation until I get a boat lift is that I am on a pretty large river and I have to tie up my boat overnight as follows (24' center console): I tie the bow with a heavy rope from the bow eye to a large piling out in front of my dock with a clove hitch and two or three half hitches with a long tail. Then I tie my stern to a piling on my dock with a couple stacked clove hitches and the boat moves around a little with the tide and wind but doesn't hit the piling or dock. My question is: is there a better knot that is more secure for the bow than a clove hitch with two additional half hitches? Sometimes I add a second, longer bow rope to a bow cleat and put a tight bowline on the other end over the bow piling as a backup to the main bow rope. Is a rolling hitch or something else better for the main bow line? Thank you.
 
You say bow eye. Do you have a bow cleat? If you have one I would use it over the bow eye. I would secure the end of that tail if it lays in the water.
 
First of all and most critical you don’t mention any spring lines. These are critical to keep the boat from moving fore and aft with wind or tide changes.

I don’t know why you d bother using the bow eye to secure the bow, just use the bow cleats.
 
Clove with hitchess is fine. Do what Pascal said
 
I don’t have the ability to dock between two finger docks like people traditionally do at a marina. I have a dock that comes off my property with no poles over to the side that I can dock between. I have a large piling 50 feet out from the end of my dock so I tie up between this piling and the end of the pier With a bow line to this far piling and stern line to my dock. I can switch to the bow cleat but I have always had a permanent line attached to the bow eye for this purpose because I thought that it was stronger. My main question is what is the best knot to tie to the single piling that is 50 feet out from my dock. Maybe what I am using is ok.
 
your clove hitch and several tight half hitches should work fine. For longer term you could tie the tail to the line with just to stop it flailing around in the wind.
 
My dad taught me how to tie a clove hitch when I was a kid many years ago. When it comes to a piling, it is all I ever use and has never let me down in over 50 years.
 
CWMS - my dad also taught me the clove hitch as well. Also the bowline and half hitches. These three will do most things in my experience. I have started to favor the Rollinghitch over the Clovehitch because it seems like it is stronger. I am hopeful to have a boatlift in soon so that I won’t have to wade or kayak to my boat every evening and morning. Thanks to all for the advice. I used to be on here a lot when it was boatfix before the economic downturn and it shut down. It has been great to see that it is alive again.
 
A little slack is preferable to leaving the lines taut. Wear out a cheap piece of line instead of bending or breaking your deck iron (and the substrate it’s mounted to).
 
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