Whipping The Ends of Line

Whipping The Ends of Line

Modern rope is truly wonderful – especially as compared to line that we used on sailboats fifty years ago.  But, like the old line, it is possible for the ends of the rope to come unraveled and look like some sort of brush.  When this happens, it makes the line difficult to thread through blocks and/or fairleads.  To prevent the ends from unraveling, whipping the end with a light line is the answer.  I like to use waxed line.  It seems to last longer and I get a tighter whip.

The first thing that I like to do is push one end of the waxed line through the rope about one fourth to thee eighths of an inch from the rope’s end, and make a loop away from the end.

I now wrap the waxed line around and around the rope until the whipping is two to three times longer than the rope’s diameter.  When this is done, I use a sailmaker’s needle to push the waxed thread through the loop and the rope.

Pulling the end of the waxed line closest to the rope’s end will pull the other end of the waxed line underneath the whipping and makes the whole thing nearly impossible to unravel.

Trim off the waxed line ends right up close to the whipping and you are done.