The trick to coiling lines

What is the issue?

You need to coil lines so that they may be tidied away and ready to be quickly deployed again. Coiling ropes looks simple, but when it comes to it the rope tends to fight the coiling and never lays flat to make those beautiful even coils. Almost all my early attempts looked like an impression of the path an atom makes around the nucleus rather than the beautifully coiled ropes that instruction books present.

Why address this?

Coiled ropes not only look good but are easy to stow, find and identify, and quick to bring into use. If you don’t properly stow lines you will have a snakes honeymoon to deal with day in day out.

How to address this?

Coils ropes by the method presented in figures 1 and 2. The trick with coiling is to give each individual loop a slight twist until it happily lays flat in the coil. Below an old laid or three strand line is being placed into the commonly used 'Gasket Coil' which is a highly reliable coil for lines that are to be hung or laid out in a locker.

Most laid ropes have a 'Right Hand Lay' and should therefore be coiled clockwise.

Coil it into nice even coils, and the trick to coiling a rope is to twist each loop until the line lays flat.

Keep going until there is a nice length left to wrap around the rope. Then start taking a few turns round to keep the coils together.

As the coil finishes then pull a bight through the top of the coils.

Bring that bight down over the top of the coils to create what is called a Gasket Coil hitch.

Drop it down and pull up the bitter end.

You can now use the bitter end to make it off for storage. The line is tidy and easy to stow. The twist makes it lay evenly, but it is not so necessary with braid line as the video shows below.

With thanks to:

Michael Harpur, Yacht Obsession.

How to Coil a Line (with no twists)

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