Great Queen Clara Hitch

The Great Queen Clara Hitch is a variant of the Queen Clara Hitch and employs additional turns to increase surface friction. It uses the same finish, over two and under one, but over a much longer series of turns, with at least six recommended. The extra turns let it hold on smooth, cylindrical materials where the simpler Clara hitches slip (e.g. varnished timber and metal poles).

Dr. Harry Asher devised this hitch to withstand a longitudinal pull on a smooth spar, and demonstrated it in 1986 on the display stand of the International Guild of Knot Tyers (IGKT) at the annual Boat Show in the Earls Court exhibition hall in London, England, where it held against a pull towards the narrow end of a billiard cue. It is the largest of the three Clara knots Asher published that year in A New System of Knotting. The design follows directly from a note in his Alternative Knot Book, where he observed that the grip of a Clara Hitch 'increases dramatically with more turns'.

The working end is wrapped at least six turns round the spar, then brought back beyond its own standing part and passed round once more in the opposite direction, and finished by tucking it over two parts and under one, exactly as for the Queen Clara Hitch. Where the hitch is made near the end of a spar, the resulting bight can instead be twisted into a loop and slipped over the spar's end before tightening.

Six or more turns give this hitch by far the greatest grip in the Clara family, and it is the only member intended for smooth surfaces such as varnished wood or metal. The grip of the Great Queen Clara increases with the number of turns, and an extra turn or two adds a margin of safety. It holds by friction along the spar and, like the rest of the family, only while the pull tension is maintained.