Given many of the odd experiences I’ve had at sea it’s easy to understand why so many of the early sailors were extremely superstitious. Strange things, which can be very frightening at the time, do happen to people whilst out at sea. Most of them can be explained nowadays. We also have the luxury of being able to read up about them afterwards, in a variety of information sources now available to mariners. Ancient seamen and explorers obviously didn’t have the same luxury!
Undoubtedly, ball lightening, which I witnessed years ago in Indonesia during the mid-seventies whilst delivering a yacht, was extremely frightening. Beating south down the Java Sea on a black, humid night, accompanied by rainsqualls 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. Certainly, it didn’t feel that way at that time!
Sailing in the dark through Indonesia was difficult enough then because there were still many sail-trading Pinisi’s. They only showed one flittering Hurricane lamp at night. A complete left over before they discovered Oil this country full of thousands of islands.
My latest reading about Ball Lightening seems to indicate, that what this phenomenon is, might finally have been solved. It is having been re-created in a Brazilian lab, and suggests that when lightning 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 Krakatau. Maybe it picked up silicon from this land!
Any type of lightning, 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 or indeed anything unknown does help to take some of the fear factor away at least! A bad bout of Forked Lightening was terrifying when delivering ‘Sphere’ a 32ft WestSail from Florida to the Hudson. After we’d rounded Cape Hatteras.
Single-handed sailing or being alone on a 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 with my tiny boat ‘Miss Content’. Then suddenly being punched in the chest by some unknown creature that flapped around the cockpit grating close to my bare feet wasn’t fun. My heart missed a beat, until I used a torch and realized, it was only a small flying fish!
More recently, whilst coaching 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 RIBS in my group, 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 our Cumbrae workboat with our bosun, having just left the marina 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 they emerged in one piece he continued north up the Clyde, to begin laying some racing marks off Inverkip.
Andy knew that waterspouts are ’tornadoes over water’, but he didn’t think 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 him later what the experience felt like, he just said “noisy, windy and very wet”. Bob his boss at the Scottish National Watersports Centre at that time wasn’t surprised at all by his antics. Summing it up beautifully by casually mentioning, that he thought that perhaps “Andy might slightly lack imagination, sometimes!”
There hasn’t been a waterspout in the Largs Channel before or then; we were seeing a bit of history. Sure, we have very high winds in Scotland but it’s normally too cold to create this wonderful act of nature.
There are many other things I can remember. When a boy sailing on my parents’ yawl ‘Patience’. We were crossing the Channel coming back from St. Helier towards the south coast overnight. My father felt we might be able to see the loom of Portland Bill Lt. Ho.; eventually! He was extremely surprised when my mum told him she could see it. Only for him to realize she was seeing the Moon rising. Later after leaving Weymouth, she was convinced she saw the Periscope of a Submarine, which she might have. Unfortunately, as a family we were all much more skeptical about her sightings by now.
Having spent a large proportion of my life at sea. Other amazing sights have occurred like seeing my first Blue Whale which I thought was an upturned ship.
Strange noises at night can also be frightening. Dolphins venting round the boat on a dark night. Only their Phosphorescence streams explained what was happening for me. Whilst becalmed in the NE Trades from down below, I heard a strange noise coming from my Wind Vane. With a torch then seeing that a Dorado was rubbing itself again my Paddle. I rapidly got out my Spear Gun, was thinking breakfast. People have also suggested that birds don’t fly at night, but they do at sea, if there’s good Moonlight. I’ve heard them and then seen them!
I’m certain many other sailors have seen or heard many more strange things that can’t always be explained. Certainly, never seen this but can you imagine seeing the headlights of a giant Squid at night. When there were more of them, and they do fight with Whales in the deep. These and other natural phenomena help to explain old sailors’ superstitions. Particularly during the days of sail when there was only the sound of wind in the sails and that of the sea but no engine noise…
