Cowboy bowline so easily pushed back by accident. However, there is no documentation to confirm this claim, and some Dutch knot tyers outright deny it. Another piece of unverified lore is that it is called a winter bowline because the exposed working end on the outside would blow in the wind and prevent it from freezing to the loop on ships in the north Atlantic during winter. (This suggests that the standard bowline would be the summer bowline.) "The Ashley Book of Knots" states that it is "distinctly inferior" to the standard bowline because of its similarity to the left-hand sheet bend.
Figure Eight Island is located just north of Wrightsville Beach and Wilmington. The island has an area of , most of which is marshland. Between the northernmost part of Figure Eight and Lea-Hutaff Island lies Rich Inlet, one of the few natural inlets in North Carolina. To the south, between the island and Wrightsville Beach, lies Mason Inlet. The former is a stable inlet, while the latter is migratory. Due to the island's proximity to the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, the ocean temperatures off of Figure Eight are comparable to destinations much further south and considerably warmer than the ocean off