It is quick, easy to put on and requires no tools. A decorative method, it has a bonus: if one or two strands get cut the whipping will still hold.
GENE BJERKE
This whipping is basically a series of overhand knots laid up the end of the rope. Take about a half a fathom of whipping twine and make a loose overhand knot in the middle. Slip this over the end of the rope to where you want to start your whipping and pull it tight. Now, flipping the rope back and forth, put in overhand knots on alternating sides of the rope. Make them close together so that you cannot see the rope between the knots. Once the whipping is "square," you simply finish it off with a tightly tied reef knot and trim the ends.
Quick and simple, and if you pull the overhand knots tight as you make them, the whipping will hold well.
Gene Bjerke, whose work has appeared in Cruising World, Chesapeake Bay, Good Old Boat and Multihulls magazines, regularly crews on square riggers near his home in Virginia. He has been boating for 45 years.
