How to coil a mooring line

The hardest chapter to write in Narrowboating for Beginners was the “Knots and Ropes” chapter, because I know from experience that learning to tie a knot by reading about it, or even seeing illustrations of it, never works. You end up realizing you need three hands or extra dimensions to accomplish the task.

Of course even harder is the task of creating the illustrations. The original version of this had ten steps, finally boiled down to the five you see here (I cheated by separating out securing the line to a railing).

Even still, it can be difficult to follow this illustration, so I direct you to the video below:

Of course the prettiest way to coil a rope is the Flemish flake, but seriously, who has time for that?