Electricity in the Sky
I was trimming sails on watch when I saw a flash of light. At first I thought it may be the bow navigation lights glitching but I remembered those are the colors of red and green. Looking out past the bow of the boat I see it again: a full night’s sky flash of light.
Lightning while on a boat. They say don’t sail in it. But we are here and there is no getting off the boat. I notify Dylan and as he wakes from his sleep to look out the gangway it flashes again for confirmation. There is electricity in the sky. We decide to slow down into it, reefing as it feels there may be a pick up of wind. We make a quick scan of what ever else could be around us and both maintain below deck touching only insulating materials on the salon couch beds that sat on wood. It was hot, humid and sticky and we were sweating with no windows open in almost a fog of the incapability to sleep. Then it dawns that maybe we should tack away from this cell. It had been consistently flashing off the bow, and now we were continuing to sail into it. We get back on deck and tack to put the cell to our port quarter, making sure to not touch two metal objects at once and become part of the electrical circuit.
We are in the zone of the ITCZ, the intra tropic convergence zone, where the northern and southern hemispheres meet near the equator. The air is warm, wind variable, and everything feels very moist due to the humidity. The presence of clouds are different here with layers of gray moisture and puffy cloudy.
Yesterday Dylan mentioned that each stage of the trip is like a level:
get out of Avalon and make headway
Sailing and on the right track
Batteries and indecision and troubleshooting
Following correct path and not going too far west finding bearing due to wind
Squalls of high wind and rain and low visibility with volatility
Doldrums of lightening, thunder, squalls and doldrums
Getting hit by a low pressure convergence zone by surprise
I can only imagine what is yet to come.
We are out in the middle of the ocean as you possibly can. The closest land is 1500 miles away in any direction.
