andromeda of plymouth - Where have alll the wooly hats gone? The sea has claimed them every one.

Where have alll the wooly hats gone? The sea has claimed them every one.

andromeda of plymouth

Susan and Andrew Wilson

Sun 6 Jul 2014 12:48

N38:02:638 W15:21:929

Progess report - we are over half way to the Portuguese Coast, yippee, will soon be heading down to Cabo de St. Vincente and round the corner to Lagos.

Hats! An essential part of our sailing gear and a source of frustration too. It sems that as soon as we break in a new hat or it fits wonderfully and is so comfortable, the wind will suddenly catch us unawares and off it goes to be claimed by the sea. We estimate that we have lost around 24ish pieces of headgear between the two of us. Sun hats, baseball caps, woolly hats, bush hats, etc. They have rushed off our heads whilst we are on passage, at anchor, in the dinghy or on the dock. We have managed to rescue about half a dozen by leaping into the water but most have gone over the side and into the depths. When we were in Antigua a couple of years ago Susan lost a new sunhat when she was being ferried in James's (from Coba Libre) dinghy. It sank before we could turn round and reach it however James dived the next day and found it on the sea bed, but most of the time it is far too deep for that. There must be some very smartly dressed sea life down there, and we wonder if that is also where the missing teaspoons, odd socks, pen and pencils have gone too.

Socks! When our sons were all teenagers and still living at home they all took size 12 shoes, liked everything black with no logos etc, so we had a huge communal sock basket. Even though I bought the same brand and washed them together it was amazing at how differently individual socks survived the washing process. Inevitably when pairing them up I would end up with two mismatched socks at the end, one was bigger or longer than the other, how does that happen? It's one of life's mysteries. And as for our daughter and socks - she may have been the only girl - but in her teens they were the bane of washing day. There were always socks missing despite thorough searches but then she started wearing odd ones on purpose - I'm still not sure that really helped either..

As for the hats, well when we used to dinghy sail, over 7 years ago now, we had two Kangol woolly hats that we wore and they have both survived up until now. Then yesterday Andrew was moving the running backstay on the mizzen when off his hat blew into conservatively 4000 metres of water. We are now down to sharing the last woolly one we have left between us. It's very warm, essily pulled over our ears and despite it's age still fits snuggly and hasn't stretched or shrunk like many others have over the years. We used to buy our hats from the Kangol factory shop in the Cockermouth in the Lake District but last time we went it had closed down. We shall have to find a shop now; on the positive front maybe they will have an orange one - failing that maybe I will get my needles out.

Another aid to keeping warm that we have are some 'Buffs'. These are basically a tube of stretchy material that you can wear in many diffierent ways and are brilliant for sailing as you can wear them like a balaclava to keep you ears and neck warm and then put your woolly (if you still have one) hat on top to keep nice and toasty. We bought a couple at the boat show a few years ago and used them on various passages and have just got two new ones, with peaks so they can double as caps, from a shop in the marina in Ponta Delgada.

Grey day/black night/grey dawn......hey what's this sunshine, a blue sky, just in time for elevenses and it will stop us thinking we are living in a colourless world.

We have had a bit of company today albeit very distantly, a huge container ship crossed our bows one way, doing about 15 knots or sso, and in the distance the other way we could just see another yacht.

Stop press - we have just been passed by a HUGE Maersk container ship on our starboard bow, and it is only just over a mile away........