My favourite baseball cap is no longer in my possession. It didn’t quite make it to its first birthday. 24^th December. 

The scene of its loss. Fakarava lagoon. Approximately midday. Sailing south, close hauled, 18 to 20 knots of breeze, occasional rain showers. A slight heel but the joy of sailing in the lagoon is often  little fetch and very small waves unlike the open ocean. It makes for speedy progress. 

The cap came into my life last Christmas Eve at Disneyland in Florida. A little logo of Kermit. The words, `hi ho’. A souvenir from a crazy pre COVID day where the world and his wife were in Florida. Social distancing would have been impossible. Although the words social distancing had never crossed my consciousness before. 

As items of clothing go, this cap has had its fair share of use. Everyday for several hours here in the Pacific. And the Bahamas, Jamaica and Panama before that. It’s an essential item to check as we leave the boat…..wallet, phone, lock, water, cap. But I will no longer be sporting Kermit. A gust, a shriek, a panic, a loss. 

The package saga shows no sign of progressing. So we retraced our track down to Harifa in the south. Not far, maybe 27 miles. We were rewarded with a full on thunderstorm, hammering rain and lightening filling the skies. Meteo France announced today there were over 5000 lightening strikes around the Tuamotus over a period of about 36 hours. That’s stick shaking territory.

In other news, I renovated my failing flip flops. Dave said the glue probably cost more than a new pair. So! They are now have a vibrant purple neoprene top.  What’s the “4R” mantra these days…refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle, I vaguely recall? We aren’t perfect by any means here but lots of our stuff does get 4R’d. My holey silicon bread tray had been chopped up and the material will be reused to fill a gap on the outboard. The reclaimed plastic clips on a failed rucksack have been sewn into the newly made cockpit sun shade (free material from another boaty bod) and all plastic pots, such as mayonnaise jars go into a bag for future use to hold varnish or acetone or something similar. 

Accidentally loosing a cap overboard does constitute littering though. I have an aspiration that some lucky soul will fish it out of the sea and maybe the next time we are in the village, I spot someone sporting Kermit and I’ll smile knowing that cap’s previous.