It’s easy to understand why so many early sailors were superstitious from some of the odd experiences I’ve had at sea. Many strange things, which are frightening at the time and do happen too many people whilst out boating, can be explained now. We can read up about them afterwards, in many of the publications that are available to mariners. Ancient seamen obviously didn’t have that luxury!
Undoubtedly, ball lightening, which I witnessed many years ago in the Java Sea, was extremely frightening. Beating south on a black, humid night, accompanied by rain squalls and the rumble of thunder, a large red fireball suddenly started floating about in front of the boat. This eventually seemed to dissipate, after what seemed a very long time when it was lower in the sky. Knowing nothing of this phenomenon, I was really scared. On seeing two more of these fireballs later that night, but having no real way of gauging their distance to me, I just tried to sail away from them. Perhaps this was a rather pointless thing to do, when thinking about it later, as they moved all over the place. But it didn’t feel that way at the time!
My latest reading about Ball Lightening seems to indicate, that what this phenomenon is, might finally have been solved. It having been re-created in a Brazilian lab, and suggests that when lightening strikes a surface, like the Earth’s silica-rich soil, a vapour is formed. This silicon vapour may condense into particles, and combine with oxygen in the air to slowly burn, with the chemical energy of oxidation. The lightening balls I’d seen back then seemed to appear on my starboard side, where the long coast of Sumatra continued south towards Krakatoa. Maybe it picked up silicon from this land!
Any type of lightening, seen at sea on a sailing yacht is worrying, particularly with your mast waggling around as a great big aerial. Ball lightening is very dangerous. Knowing about it now, does help to take some of the unknown factor away at least!
Single-handed sailing or being alone on watch during a dark night allows your imagination to run riot. Bringing us all much closer to how it must have felt for primitive man. Standing up looking around in the cockpit on a moonless but wonderful night, when pleasantly running down wind in the NE trades. Being punched in the chest by some unknown creature that flapped around the cockpit grating close to my bare feet wasn’t fair at all! My heart missed a beat, until I used a torch and realised, it was only a small flying fish!
More recently, whilst teaching power boating in Scotland I was amazed to see a large waterspout moving slowly across the Largs Channel. After a quick call on the VHF to warn the two other RIB’s, we rafted together in mid-channel and watched it meander slowly east towards the Ayrshire coast. Roughly three or four thousand feet in height, from sea to cloud, its tube of water was a wondrous sight. Reminiscent of many of those I’d seen in the tropics.
However, I was even more astonished to see the workboat with our bosun, having just left the marina go charging down towards it. Andy had seen it and decided to find out firsthand, what it felt like inside a waterspout. He’s a braver man than me! We expected to find him or the boat in trouble, but emerging in one piece he continued north up the Clyde, to begin laying some racing marks off Inverkip.
If Andy had known that waterspouts are ’tornadoes over water’, possibly he might have thought twice! Although their wind strengths are mostly weaker than land tornadoes, they can still pose a considerable danger to boats from flying debris etc., if the wind is strong. And there is no real way of knowing that, until it’s too late!
Asking Andy later what the experience felt like, he just said "noisy, windy and very wet". Bob our boss at the National Centre then, wasn’t surprised at all by this action. Summing it up beautifully by mentioning, that he thought that perhaps "Andy might lack somewhat in imagination, sometimes"!
Yours Aye,
John Simpson
No comments:
Post a Comment