Rope Versus Line

Knowing the ropes
Self-styled boating experts will inform you that rope mysteriously turns into line the moment you get it aboard your boat and is never again referred to as rope. But perhaps that is an affectation born of a desire to be more nautical than one’s knowledge or experience permits, because there has always been rope on boats. The Encyclopedia of Nautical Knowledge defines rope this way: “In marine use, general term for cordage composed of strands, and, as a rule, larger than 1 inch in circumference.”It’s true that for practical purposes ropes are given other names on boats, and may turn into sheets, halyards, warps, rodes, pendants, painters, hawsers, strops, cables, mooring lines, docklines, leech lines, heaving lines, downhauls, uphauls, out-hauls, guys, reef points, lashings, lanyards, preventers, and vangs, among others.But there are still also many “ropes” on a vessel, including the bolt rope, the tiller rope, the foot rope, the check rope, the dip rope, and others, including wire rope. Most telling of all, a sailor’s own phrase for professional competence was “to know the ropes.” Not the lines, you observe.See also Rope Strength; Rope Stretch.