The stern tie line is a big duffle bag with a strong, floating line stacked loosely inside. The established technique pulls the end to shore, around a tree, and then pulled back to the boat with a tag line. Jeff's idea for improving the stern tie? Tie the end of the line to the boat and take the bag to shore. Instead of me feeding him slack as he rowed to shore, he now had to manage paying out line while rowing. I was interested to see what was next. It was hard to see what he was up to at that distance, but it appeared he climbed up the kelp slick slope with coils of rope in his arms, then passed wads of rope around the tree. The rats-nest that had been an orderly stack of rope was returned to the bag and gave him more trouble on the way back to the boat than it did on the way out. He admitted afterward that he hadn't thought it through very well. Ahh well, rarely is there innovation without a few setbacks.
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