Hi!

What I need to do is secure a boat to a dock. The boat has two ropes : one in the front, and one in the back. Both ropes are secured to the boat on one end, and the other end is tied to a paint bucket full of dried cement to serve as anchors.

I need to tie the ropes to two rings that are bolted to a dock. How can I neatly tie the rope to the rings without the possibility of manipulating the "end" of the rope (the paint bucket end)?

I see too many people just jerking the rope in the rings hoping everything will stay in place. I need to learn how to do it the right way.

Any help or specific knot schematics for this application would be appreciated!

Pull a bight (loop) through the ring and then tie a round turn and two half hitches with the doubled over rope.

Edit: you should really be adding springs too if there is any chance of forward/backward motion.

Bee, Andy's method is a good solution for a bad system. Please don't take this wrong, but your very terminology is giving me flashbacks and a sinking feeling <img src="/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /> Ships and boats take rope onboard for use. When it is put into use it is always called line. The front is the bow, the rear the stern. Again, please don't take this as sarcasm. I don't know if this is a plastic dingy on a lake or what <img src="/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /> Please, get a basic book on smallcraft handling!

A paint bucket filled with cement doesn't seem particularly nautical either.

Huge stone anchors found off California's coast have been identified as ancient chinese.

My aquatic biology professor in grad school - a former navy man - would go nuts when we suggested that we were walking on a "dock" or tying our boats up to a "dock". He was quick to point out that the thing you walk on, sit on, fish from, and sometimes tie boats to is called a "pier". The dock is the area of water alongside a pier on which the boat rests.

He used to say that only Jesus could walk on a dock.

Eh. Obsessing over nomenclature... Being a "hacker" was originally considered a good thing. Then the mainstream heard the term, a few movies came out, and now being a hacker is a bad thing. I just use an internal english<->geek dictionary, suppress the urge to correct, and use domain specific terminology only with peers.

So. I tie the front and back of my boat to the dock with rope. Deal. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

My point is that any intimacy with a particular activity gives rise to it's particular vocabulary and may measure the user's capabilities. I was manuevering my MLB to rescue a drifting pleasureboat drifting sternfirst into the rocky jetty. I loudhailed for one of the occupants to go to the bow and catch the line we were going to throw. They didn't have a clue ( as I learned later) and decided I was trying to say 'BACK.' The result was all 5 people went to the stern and swamped the boat.

I'm on your side. It's just that so many people seem willfully ignorant and proud of it. It's often just easier to use the term you know they'll understand instead of the one they should. I suppose this is "enabling", but...

I second that (or Third it)

But this discussion is knot solving Bee's floaty thing tied to the do dahs on the thing'a'me'jig