by design it would be best if the line below hitch is not loaded
That is for sure - and THEN, only then, it might be the case that the
Icicle hitch might be better than the
rat-tai-stopper, indeed !
However, this subject, the
"Best gripping hitch around a not-loaded / not-tensioned rope", belongs to another thread...
I now know ( because it was revealed and proved by the posts in this thread ) that most knot tyers do not (yet) know the
rat-tail-stopper, and they do not understand clearly how it works, so they do not believe it works better than all the other gripping hitches around tensioned ropes ! It is not the first time , of course, that arm-chair knot tyers do not know or understand an already known, by the practitioners of another occupation, knot - however, I must say that
I was embarrassed by the way commercial boat sailors looked at me, when I showed them this knot they knew it existed from the time of their grand-parents... which, by the way, I have since learned that is used every day for securing the mooring or anchor line of
big boats. I had never met this knot in small, recreational sailing boats, or, even if I did, it seems that I had not noticed it, and so I had not appreciated it, or tried to understand its working.
I have a theory, that most knot tyers were misled by the classification and the drawings of similar hitches by Ashley, only as hitches
around poles ! They had never considered those hitches as hitches
around ropes, where they always had preferred the climbing gripping hitches. And they had never really understood and explained the difference between such a cross-gartered hitch tied around a "compressible" material, a rope, where the knobs of the crossing points can "bite" the surface, and so become able to be attached on it easier, and a solid material, a pole, where they can not. So, they had not tried to maximize the effect of the particular property that makes those hitches very efficient : the even distribution of the crossing points on the surface of the main line, where , at each crossing point, the one leg, as a riding turn, pushes the other to "bite" into the flesh of the material.
Now, regarding tight hitches
around poles, I had also tied or learned some "new" ones. FAR better than the
Icicle hitch - as the
Locked Cow hitch or the recent
Alaskian hitch and
Bull Clove hitch, for example - but this is also the subject of another thread !
