<p>A display of knots, created by Bill Antilla, can be found in the Maritime Science Department building at Clatsop Community College's Marine and Environmental Research and Training Station campus.</p>

For centuries, sea-going men set sail seeking fortune, adventure and fish, spending months on the briny blue without television, electronic games or cell phones. Lucky for us, what they did have on deck was a ready supply of rope and plenty of it. Essential to hoist the sails and repair nets, the rope also provided those sailors of yesteryear a means and a material to combat boredom and relieve monotony. For thousands of years, men at sea have designed nautical knots, passing their skill down over generations to other knot-making men (and now women) who continued creating, embellishing and improving the both practical and decorative knots. Fortunately, the art of the knot lives on.

A knot is a combination of like-fibers or a variety of different fibers. The fibers are twisted, turned, and/or interlaced tightly together, creating joints or bumps that make loops and spaces. Knots can act as fasteners think of boats and ships lines securing vessels to a dock. Knots can connect two pieces of like-fiber together or to another type of fiber.

Knots and fiber have a very pracitical purpose for Columbia River bar pilots; they use an exit ladder called a man rope to exit off ships back into the pilot boat after helping navigate ships through the Columbias trecherous sand bar. Its very important that the ladder be made with manila side ropes for our hands to grip, Captain Robert Johnson, a Columbia River bar pilot, said. Synthetic or wire rope would be too slippery to hang on to. Manila rope is a natural fiber which is knotted to the cross rungs of the ladder, today usually steel wire, by a nautical method known as seizing. Manila hemp rope is a flexible natural fiber from the abaca plant. Named after the capital of the Philippines, today it has been largely replaced by synthetics and steel rope, and its main use is as nautical decoration.

There are so many kinds of rope that come in so many sizes that can be tied into so many knots each one of them providing for a need. Knots, bends, hitches, splices and seizings are all ways of fastening cords or ropes, either to some other object such as a spar, or a ring, or to one another. The knot is formed to make a knob on a rope, generally at the extremity and by untwisting the strands at the end and weaving them together. But it may be made by turning the rope on itself through a loop according to The Encyclopedia Britannica.

If you mention Bill Antillas name to area knot-tiers, fishermen and decoy carvers in our area, they nod in agreement regarding his knowledge of many things, including knots. The same knot can have different purposes, though most have specific applications, Antilla said. Today most (fishing) nets are machine made, though long ago they were hand knit. A ball of string can be made into a net, it just takes time. And knitting is all about knots: A fishermans sweater, even though a traditionally worn garment, is far more about knot-style than construction. A net is sewed into one piece or knotted sewing, knotted, its the same thing. A Netter is generally considered to be the most highly skilled person on the boat; its not an easy job. Antilla has been working on and around boats since he was a kid, and at one time he built, maintained and repaired huge nets, some measuring 800 feet long. Thats a whole lot of knots.

Dan Bohren, aka Cable Dan, is another area legend. Working at Astorias Englund Marine, he knows his ropes, and he knows his knots. Theres a lot to rope: some need to float, some needs to sink, some hold up well to abrasion, and some dont, he said. Knots are where the rope gets the most wear, the weak spot. According to Bohren, some ropes and knots need give or stretch; a line tying a vessel to a dock needs some wiggle room. Other ropes need no give or high tension, such as the lines on cranes that hoist and lower products. There are so many types of ropes, and knots with so many different applications, Bohren said.

Nautical knots, whether for sea-going application or decorative designs, such as macramé or knitting, have countless uses. Rope, cord, twine, yarn or thread, tying the knot, in this case make that tying the nautical knot, looks like joining together is here to stay.