Alternate ring hitching, also known as Kackling or Keckling, is a type of ringbolt hitching formed with a series of alternate left and right hitches made around a ring. Covering a ring in hitching can prevent damage if the ring is likely to chafe or strike against something, such as a mooring line or mast.
As a means of dampening sound in row boats when a covert night operation was being undertaken, oar handles were wrapped in keckling knots to prevent wood rubbing on wood.
Famous quotes containing the words alternate, ring and/or hitching:
“It might become a wheel spoked red and white
In alternate stripes converging at a point
Of flame on the line, with a second wheel below,
Just rising, accompanying, arranged to cross,
Through weltering illuminations, humps
Of billows, downward, toward the drift-fire shore.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“But whatever happens, wherever the scene is laid, somebody, somewhere, will quietly set out—somebody has already set out, somebody still rather far away is buying a ticket, is boarding a bus, a ship, a plane, has landed, is walking toward a million photographers, and presently he will ring at my door—a bigger, more respectable, more competent Gradus.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not they back to the compass; accept the first hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire, when its redness makes all things look ghastly.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)