Portuguese Bowline

This bowline variant is traditionally associated with Iberian and South American maritime rescue work, though we have not been able to trace that attribution to a primary source. What is not in doubt is the problem it solves: a rescue seat needs one loop that fits snugly and one that fits more loosely, and most double-loop bowlines produce two loops of essentially matched, fixed size. The Portuguese bowline's second loop, formed by an extra wrap of the working end before it's tucked through, can be adjusted somewhat after tying - letting a rescuer size one loop tight around a chest and the other looser around legs, or vice versa.

The tying method starts identically to a standard bowline and diverges at the point where the working end would normally make a single pass around the standing part - here it wraps around twice, forming its own separate loop before continuing through the original hole. That single change is what gives the knot its two-loop, adjustable-fit character.

As with the Spanish bowline it's often compared to, its main real-world use has always been improvised rescue - hoisting or lowering a person with a rough two-point seat when no rated harness is on hand. Whichever of the two knots a given rescue tradition favors seems to come down largely to local training lineage rather than any dramatic performance difference between them.

Because the loop sizes can be tuned somewhat after the knot is dressed, riggers sometimes describe the Portuguese bowline as the more forgiving of the two similar knots to fit to an actual person under time pressure, since the Spanish bowline's more rigid two-loop geometry is harder to resize once tied. Both remain fundamentally last-resort improvisations rather than an everyday tool, taught today mostly in advanced wilderness-rescue and traditional-seamanship courses rather than as a core skill.