Sailing through a Lightning Storm during our Fort Lauderdale to Norfolk Passage
SV Illimite was docked for a month at a friend’s house on the New
River in Fort Lauderdale. We stayed
onshore and visited the boat during the week for boat repair and projects. We worked hard all day, and enjoyed the
creature comforts of living onshore for a couple of weeks.
After a stressful couple hours backing out of a narrow canal in
Fort Lauderdale and going through 6 bascule bridges we finally made it back
into the open ocean. Went out to the
Gulf Stream for a nice ride north. We
were making great time with about 2.5 knots favorable current.
It was our second night and
I was really enjoying the sail, taking in all of the expanse of the Atlantic
Ocean, happy, playing music and singing after dinner. It felt like a
homecoming, sailing off the coast of Florida in the summertime. I was keenly looking out for storms as I was
worried about a waterspout developing.
On my watch I observed the beginning formation, of a lightning storm
around 7pm, we were 150 miles east of Jacksonville Florida. On this night, neither of us slept as we
worked towards avoiding the lightning storm.
The lightning storm was downwind of us to the west, we were in a
deep reach. We altered course east to
add some distance between us and the storm.
We closely monitored the radar and made waypoints of our navigation to
track it. With no success the storm
seemed to be gaining on us and following us, so we altered course again and
headed south, the opposite direction we were originally sailing. We were motor sailing into the wind to give
us maximum speed. Watching the radar was
pretty intense, we felt helpless. We
put our VHF radio and satellite phone into the microwave for safe keeping (we
have other backup navigation devices permanently store in EMP protection
bags). Seven hours after first
attempting to flee from the lighting storm, we lost, we were surrounded. It was intense, the lightning was all around
us and we were receiving strikes directly behind the boat. I was pretty terrified, my hands were
shaking, and moving about the boat was difficult, making sure not to touch any
metal. My nerves were on fire, I had
intense pain in my chest and thought we were going to get hit for sure. We kept sailing. We didn’t get hit, we had a little distance
and then I started to film some of the lightning strikes from our cabin.
We spent the rest of the night trying to keep some distance, at
dawn it was behind us after our 11 hour ordeal. We were full of adrenaline and pretty shell
shocked for the rest of the passage. We
stayed vigilant on our lookouts for cloud formations and the radar, until the
radar failed.
It took us a day and a half to make it back into the Gulf
Stream. We still had to maneuver to
avoid squalls with severe lightening. But successfully this time. We safely
made it to Norfolk, I am thankful that our sail home will not be in the Gulf
Stream. We have been through a cyclone
in New Zealand, lightning storms in SE Asia, four gales in the Pacific on SV
Illimite. After 11 hours of lightning
these past event seem a lot less dramatic.
Hoping to have some more time pass before our next storm.
Please watch video: https://youtu.be/TdOROcyYGZ0
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