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TIL my knot tying got better after I stopped practicing on land and did it 40 feet down in murky water
Last month I was doing a inspection job in the Chicago River and my tender kept razzing me about how slow I was tying off. I had practiced bowlines and clove hitches on a piece of rope on my couch for weeks, but down there with 6 inches of visibility my hands just froze. My supervisor told me "you can't learn feel in a living room" so he had me do 20 tie-offs on a piling in 8 feet of water with my eyes basically useless. Three days later I set a flange bolt in 40 feet of zero viz without looking once. Anyone else find their muscle memory only kicks in when the water forces it?
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blakem371mo ago
The part nobody talks about is how this messes with your head above water too. Once you trust your hands in zero viz, you stop needing to see stuff to believe it. I've watched guys come back from a season of murky work and they rig a truck bed or a trailer hitch without even glancing down. The couch practice never goes away, it just gets buried under the real thing. Your brain files land knots and water knots in two different drawers. Problem is most people only ever fill the first drawer and then wonder why they choke when it counts.
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