Water Bowline best of breed?

[Festy]

I've tried to capsize it, upset it, jam it etc, and it seems to resist anything I throw at it.

Admittedly, I'm limited to my own body-weight and muscles to test it, so I wonder if it's fair to say that it is the best of all the bowline variants, especially taking into consideration it's ease of tying and it's dependability, wet or dry?

thanks folks,
F 

[Sweeney]

I would prefer the girth hitch bowline  - similar to the water bowline but using a girth hitch rather than a clove hitch. If additional security is needed then the mirrored bowline follows easily. But that's just a personal preference, I actually use the perfection/anglers' loop more often than a bowline.

Barry

[Dan_Lehman]

I've tried to capsize it, upset it, jam it etc, and it seems to resist anything I throw at it.

Admittedly, I'm limited to my own body-weight and muscles to test it, so I wonder if it's fair to say that it is the best of all the bowline variants, especially taking into consideration it's ease of tying and it's dependability, wet or dry?

And what other bowlines (or other eye knots) have you
similarly tested?  Did you capsize the bowline (#1010)?
In what cordage ... ?

You have your body weight, yes, but perhaps also
some means to multiply that with a sort of pulley.


--dl*
====

[roo]

I've tried to capsize it, upset it, jam it etc, and it seems to resist anything I throw at it.

Admittedly, I'm limited to my own body-weight and muscles to test it, so I wonder if it's fair to say that it is the best of all the bowline variants, especially taking into consideration it's ease of tying and it's dependability, wet or dry?

It's an excellent loop.  And it's such a natural extension of the bowline, you don't even feel like you have to remember much of anything new or different.  Once you have it, it's hard to forget and easy to check.  With great security and jam resistance, it's hard to find fault with it.


update: see also:
http://notableknotindex.webs.com/monsoonbowline.html

[xarax]

   Many people feel a genuine sense of security in the belief of the idea of a "best of breed" of anything - including knots. 
   ( When this idea is confined into the sphere of inanimate objects, it leads to a waste of the natural resources. However, when it breaches that barrier, it leads to the waste of human lives, which is an altogether different matter... ( Ubermensch ))
   The Water bowline is just a two-nipping-loops secure bowline, one out of the dozens of dozens we have. If we do not define precisely which of the many properties of the bowlines we decide to take into account, and if we do not measure, quantitatively, those properties, we can not evaluate one bowline as "better" or "worse" than another.
   It may be improved further by the addition of a second collar around the rim of the "lower" nipping loop, so it becomes a two-nipping-loops / two-collars bowline. Its name is misleading ( as most names of knots are ) - I do not think that somebody had ever compared this so-called "Water" bowline to any other secure bowline, in wet conditions, and found that it is "better", regarding security or strength. I call it "Clove bowline", because its nipping structure is topologically identical and geometrically similar to the Clove hitch - although it can be dressed in forms where the two nipping loops do not remain so close to each other, as in a Clove hitch. Mark Gommers says that "Under load, the 2 nipping turns tend to separate", but I believe that the same can be said for the Girth bowline, and it depends on the initial dressing of the knot, not only its loading. The two nipping loops of a Clove bowline, where the Clove hitch-based nipping structure has been dressed and pre-tensioned in a tight form, will remain closer to each other than the nipping loops of ABoK#1012, even after heavy loading.
   I had been tying bowlines all my life, but recently I have noticed that I am seduced by the few TIB ones : A TIB knot, especially when it is a PET loop, like the bowlines, is a marvellous thing !  So, if one wants a TIB "Water bowline", he has just to retuck the Tail End through the collar, as shown in :
   http://igkt.net/sm/index.php?topic=4695.msg32103#msg32103
   To tie it in-the-bight, all one has to do is to follow the "haltering collar" method discussed there.