Sunglasses!

Sunglasses. Essential in this strength of light but a
bit of a pain on a boat, especially if you need prescription lenses for
distance and reading. You need distance so that you can see where you are
going, keep a look out for other boats, lobster pots, fish farms, rocks and so
on. You need a reading pair for looking at the charts and writing in the
log. You have to take the sunglasses off when you go below and swop them
for the reading glasses and vice versa when you come back up into the light.
You need them to stay on when you are looking down working on the winches and
looking up checking the sails and, if they do fall off, you need them to stay
attached to you otherwise they go straight over the side because that is what
happens on a boat. Drop something six feet from the edge and it will
roll, bounce or otherwise make it’s way rapidly into the sea to be lost
forever. Nothing too tricky here then; all that is needed is a cord
to hold them on. Indeed. Except, adjustable cords bounce on the back
of your neck and your back in a most irritating way when you are wearing a
swimming costume (never a problem when wearing a shirt of course but who wants
to do that in this heat?) and the sports variety with a tight strap is
irritating when you need to take them off quickly and gets sticky on your
face. We have tried various combinations of tightness and looseness,
tucking the loose bit of the strap into the tight bit and so on. All sort
of works for a while but fails sooner or later. And then David and Susan arrive; put their sunglasses on
and... they have solved the problem with the niftiest purchase ever from an
outdoor shop. Maybe this is old news to you and you have already seen
these gadgets but I got seriously excited about them. So much so that
David and Susan left them for us and we are now happy, happy, happy in our
sunglasses. We take them off, we put them on, we hang them round our
necks, we push them up onto our hair. All is easy and there is no
annoying dangly bit bouncing around at the back. Bliss.
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