UKC

I've recently washed a 30m rope that I use predominantly indoors, however it's not that old and still has plenty of life in it, it was just dirty.

After washing it in the washing machine at 30 degrees, I layed it out on the floor to dry. Today I coiled it up and my middle marker is now not in the middle. It would appear that the rope has either stretched or shrank on one end of the rope. The difference is about a meter, so rather significant really. The middle marker was only put on about a month or so ago, so could it be that it was stretched before I put the middle marker on and washing it has 'reset' the stretch? Or has the washing machine wrecked it?

Has anyone else experienced this before?

In reply to BStar:

It seems quite unlikely that the rope shrank on one side only (unless its texture was somehow directional).
Seems more likely that when you marked it was more streched on one side, maybe beacuse of a sport climbing session not long before.

In reply to BStar:

Obvious question but do you know 100% for sure that the mark was right in the middle of the rope before you washed it?

In reply to Fraser:

I'm pretty OCD so when marking it out I checked several times, it wouldn't have been a 1m off that's for sure. I am 99% sure it was in the middle, as that's where I always coil from and I was never left with two tails of very different lengths before.