Sailors are supposed to be experts at knots, but one quickly comes to a different conclusion when one walks around the harbor of Cannes (or, for that matter, any harbor around here). It seems that boats are tied up willy-nilly with any kind of material that happens to be on hand. The rope is still an old favorite, but more and more, rusty chains are making inroads. If one is interested (which most boaters clearly don’t appear to be), one can learn amazing things about knots on the web, starting, for example, with this page, or perhaps with this one. The smaller the boat, the rule seems to be, the messier the job of tying it to the pier, but there are exceptions, such as this mess; at the other end of the various ropes and chains is not just a boat, but a veritable yacht.