Man Oh Man The Lightning

Elizabeth City Library
36 17.59 N 076 14.57 W

Last night, around 0300, an amazing lightning storm passed close by.  One of the strikes seemed to last 3-4 seconds with continuous flashing and thundering that whole time.   Fortunately, the storm and the strikes seemed to stay at least 1-2 miles away from us.   I haven't seen such lightning since that night at sea off Florida in 2005.  Man oh man.

How many sailors does it take to change a light bulb?  Three.  One up the mast, one cranking the winch, and one to tail the rope.  Libby and I don't attempt it with just the two of us; that's too dangerous.

Today, my big project was to go up the mast and repair the anchor light.  We have been using our oil lamp anchor light backup for a couple of months.   But now it's fixed.  Brian, the skipper of the Nonesuch boat next door assisted us.

Then, I reciprocated and helped haul Brian up to the top of his mast so that he could change his light bulb.  He bought a LED bulb for his anchor light.  When he got up there, he found that it was the wrong size.  Bummer.

Imagine being up the mast during one of those lightning storms?  Unthinkable to us modern sailors, but in centuries past it was commonplace.  Of course they had wooden masts rather than metal, but still ---