Steve wrote in message
...

How about it, can anyone persuade me not to put a Stopper Knot
in my
sheets??

When I was working rigs using natural fibre (that shows my age .
.. .) one of my gnarled old skippers insisted on never using
stopper knots. His reason: if you tied a stopper knot in a dry
(natural fibre) rope, strained it tight, then it became wet, the
rope swelled and the knot became more difficult to undo.

He was talking in the context of gaff rigged vessels whose
halyards were double ended, with a purchase on one of the ends.
The significance of this was that when you had to lower the gaff
in a big hurry, you needed to be able to release only one end and
let it unreeve - and a stopper knot, especially a wet one tied
dry, slowed down this emergency action.

He extended this view to all ropes. His view on sheets was that
if you allow the habit in one place, it may spread.

His view was also that if you allowed a rope to unreeve
accidentally, your seamanship was wanting, and you needed a
lesson in re-reeving to remind you of your error!

You could call him a traditionalist.

With modern fibres, jamming is not an issue, and with modern rigs
the penalty of losing a halyard end up the inside of the mast is
a penalty I'd prefer to avoid. Sheets? well, they're easy to
re-reeve, though the whipping you may suffer in a strong wind is
a bit of a dis-incentive. So I can't persuade me not to use
stopper knots.

One of his habits I still keep though - I never use hitches (some
call them jamming turns) on a cleat, and on my boat I prefer
others not to use them. But I'm not going to try to convert the
rest of the world to this view. It's just my quirk, and a good
way of letting me know if anyone has been adjusting my warps for
me!

JimB