The Bowline on the Bight, or BotB, is a very commonly used 2 loop knot that can be used to form y-hangs in caves or equalise 2 anchors. The knot is fast to measure out and tie and there is little danger of getting it wrong as it has a simple form that can be easily recognised. One major drawback is that it is possible to pull one of the lines into the knot body and cause a large slippage. You’ll need to see my other blog posts on BotB knots to get more details but don’t panic, if you’ve clipped your cowstail through both loops as you should then it’s fine. If the placement of this knot prevents you clipping through both loops then I’d suggest using a Double Bowline on the Bight or Fusion Knot instead.

To tie the BotB in this method you need an Overhand Loop. With practice you can measure out the distances to both anchors prior to tying for faster rigging.

Now open up your loop and take it back over the body of the Overhand Knot and invert the structure.

Push the loop back into the knot body and your 2 loops (or ears) will begin to emerge. The loop will shrink to form the ‘nipping’ loop of the Bowline family.

And with a bit of dressing you have your Bowline on the Bight:

This method is called ‘tying on the bight’ but the BotB can also be formed by rethreading a normal Bowline directly through anchors.