Lightning is great to watch while in a protected area....but on a boat in an open Ocean, I would not call that protected. This is real...this did happen...it was even more intense than you could imagine....How can you keep the crew and boat safe...What would you have done...let me hear back...Enjoy the story and some techniques/lessons....
You can feel the deceleration as we fell off the wind. The boat followed the rising and lowering of the seas, not hard enough to throw you off balance, but enough to feel the boat drumming to a different beat. The phosphorescence in our wake trailed way back to where we fell off the wind. You could see the change in course through the phosphorescent trail. As I looked forward, through the dark sky once again, I could see the horizon more alit than dark. The lightning was intensifying, not only in frequency but in the amount of time the bolt stayed lit.
On land, the lightning would hit and disappear quickly. Here, hundreds of miles offshore, the bolt stayed there for a time…enough time for me to realize we were moving towards perhaps our doom. My mind raced for alternatives… head back to Bermuda, no… the front will overrun us…turn south…turn north… no …same thing… it will overrun us. The lightning is as far as you can see north or south, plus more from the strikes illuminating past the horizon. Fact number 1: there is no turning back…we must face our possible doom. Do we accelerate to get through it fast or take down the sails? There are always alternatives, in this case, to lessen our chance of imminent destruction.
The boat was riding well. What I saw ahead made me wonder all the more. Why isn’t it rougher out? My eyes gazed at the lit skyline. The lightning seemed taller than the clouds, more defined. I looked up our mast then at the lightning, back at the mast, holy…I’m a lightning rod, ready to get hit!! I realize my mast is not grounded. I remember visiting a sailboat builder and going aboard the boats in different phases of production. I know there are 2 groups of thought. One is to have the lightning bolt guided right out of the boat and back to ground (the water). But to do it safely, I’d imagine, I’d need a cable, at best, a foot thick, made of pure copper, and attached by a massive bolt to the ground-plate on the bottom of your hull. I’m talking big! In one of those Sailboat building phases, I saw them installing the grounding wire from the keel stepped mast to a grounding plate in the hull. The cable was the size of a car battery cable, not very thick. No way could this take a lightning strike I thought. It would melt everything and blow out that ground plate, putting a big hole in the boat. But I have my own theory on this, and that 2nd group of thought on the subject. Why attract a strike with a grounded mast! And, I think, in this scenario, more than one! Even if everything was grounded properly, the chances of going unscathed are remote. Your electronics will blow out, along with your grounding plate. Lightning will seek its own way. Each hit, I would imagine, would flow out of the vessel differently. Sometimes, right out at the water line, leaving small holes along the perimeter of the boat. Some of the strikes might run down your shrouds and jump to that water, blowing a hole in the side of boat. By not having a grounded mast, you won’t be attracting the lightning…but if we do get hit….???? What would happen…. We’re not grounded…I could ground us from the shrouds to the water in multiple areas…but I still think I don’t want to attract the lightning, not these amount of strikes. So, I guess, grounding a boat is to minimize the damage or not? So my opinion right now is to not ground us. Especially in what we’re headed for…. Crrracckkk….boom. I focus back from my inner thoughts and jump into action. I go below and tell Paul to get off the starboard settee he is laying on. He removes himself quickly, without a word. You could feel the tension the crew below has. The lightning now is lighting up the cabin, making it easier for me to see what I’m doing. The “doing” is putting the battery switch to “off”, removing the battery covers off of the battery boxes, and disconnecting not only the negative battery terminals (ground) but the positive, as well. I duct tape the ends, and remove them out of the battery boxes. I have dual batteries and want the ends as far away from the batteries as possible. I reinstall the battery box covers and secure them. I close up the bunk and decide to disconnect the wring going up the mast. All along, the flashes of lightning illuminate the interior like daytime, seeming never to darken. It is hard to believe, but you have no idea! Even I haven’t been in something this intense. This should be a movie! My reason for disconnecting the mast wires is that the wire running up and down the mast might create an electrical field from all the static electricity in the air above. What, in essence, I was trying to do was make the mast unattractive to the lightning above. I wanted to get through this like a mast in a fog, the lightning would have to get us by complete chance. I taped up those wires, running up the mast, and moved them as far away from it’s connecting block as possible. I hear Emory from above and head on deck. At that moment, a crack and a boom hit. It almost knocks me down to the cockpit floor, you can feel the pressure! Not only that, the luminous flash from the lightning makes it not only daytime but got so bright and intense, we get a white out. No color, no shapes, no people, no cockpit, just super intense white, even with your eyes closed! Emory who is at the wheel steering yells above the noise level of the lightning cracking and booming all around us, “How about those rubber gloves you have up forward? I’m holding metal!”
I stick my head below and ask Paul to send up those rubber gloves stored in the forward compartment draw. I say to Emory, “Tighten the brake on the wheel some, so you don’t have to always hold it.”
I feel a tap on my knee and see the gloves. I hand them to Emory. The rain starts coming down now, torrents of it. I think, all of the electric off, no fields, no attractions. I feel better until I think, oops, I think as the rain pours down. No bilge pump. I disconnected everything and in the blinding light I remember the manual pumps – one in the cockpit floor, by me, and one below.
I yell below, “Paul, get the manual bilge pump ready – the handle is tied to the pump.”
“I’m on it,” Paul says. The sight ahead of us, left you breathless. There’s no description, no word or statement you could make. Pressure waves from the lightning bolts including sound pulses kept you low. The faces below aglow from the lightning above, showed how pale in worry they were, as we secured the hatchway closed. White-outs numerous now, made it seem like you were sailing blind. The rain hurt your body as it pounded you relentlessly. We all knew this could be it for all of us. Were my decisions sound? Have I done my best to get us through? Crrracckk kaka boom!!
Write in, I'd like to know your thoughts and comments on what you would have done, or what should have been done......I will put up the next part soon
Tags: boat,sailboat,offshore,lightning,lightning storms,lightning strike,mast,bilge pump,manual bilge pump
