In honor of Earth Day I thought I would share a quick story about my current love child… The Batten Spoon.

I found this piece of wood in a scrap pile aboard the SSV Robert C. Seamans. It’s a piece of teak but more importantly, it’s a piece of rat board. For those of you that aren’t sailors, a rat board is a piece of wood attached to a matrix of rope that allows you to climb aloft on rigged vessels. Thanks to some routine maintenance in Auckland, NZ I managed to reclaimed this scrap!

The real story though is how this piece of wood has traveled all around the world, enduring weather to its breaking point, got discarded, and still survived. It’s kind-of a miracle. But really it’s just recycling. Happy Earth Day!