We left Virgin Gorda on Friday morning and had 3 days of good sailing: the wind was easterly and kind, going from north east, through east to south east, and increasing nicely in velocity – a sailor’s wind, allowing us to reach northwards at a good pace. Moreover, we had lovely Caribbean weather: sun with a few puffy clouds, seas smooth or slight, and everything in the garden was rosy. This is what people go sailing for, though maybe not for 72 consecutive hours! So pleasant was it that we ate late in the cockpit, and showered al fresco on the aft deck to keep cool, then air dried in the sun and breeze happily.

As noted yesterday, though, we saw a change on Sunday night. You might have thought that the Atlantic would have welcomed a prodigal back with a warm hug. Not so, she decided that what we really needed was to be picked up by the heels and given a right old smack.

We knew that there was a “bit of weather” to the north and the west, and have been downloading the forecast twice a day to check on what was happening. It was confused, with a complex low giving the computers and models a headache. Every version of the outlook was subtly or not so subtly different, but the general picture was that there would be more wind from the south sometime soon, and then it would die away. The timing for this, and the exact position of the conjunction of weather systems, were the things that kept changing. For us, it looked as if we would be able to reach Bermuda safely, but maybe with a bit of a blow on the last day or so.

We should have known that we would not be so lucky. We ought to have read the signs more carefully: the appearance of the stormy petrels swooping and hugging the bigger swells; the Sunday night change in wind direction and uptick in strength: and the hubris of celebrating the halfway point early whilst discussing how we could be in St George’s on Wednesday. Mother Atlantic was laughing, and had a big pal to help her give us a fright….

By mid morning on Monday, clouds had filled the skies in layers, and we were seeing 30 knots of wind and travelling bumpily. It rained a little and by midday, low black clouds appeared, scudding past. Shortly afterwards, some formed themselves into those heavy low level and threatening clouds which look as if someone has drawn the bottom of them in a straight line a few hundred feet above the surface. We were well prepared for the “blow”, heavily reefed and battened down. What we had not focussed on was the likelihood of worse: Ali and I looked at one another with trepidation when the first thunder clap exploded to the east, followed by a second from the west. The strikes were about 12 and 5 miles away, so not desperate, and we were actually in a clear swath stretching out behind us. As we looked to the north – in the direction we meant to go – it looked as if there was a guard of honour to welcome us – on each side the dark clouds that had begun to flash and bang regularly, with the lines converging about 5 miles to the north where there was an awful lot of activity.

We are not particularly superstitious, paranoid or cowardly (all right, we are a bit of all three!) but we decided that the smart thing to do was to turn the boat round and head directly away from the welcoming committee. Having lost 2 months of our lives last May dealing with the consequences of the devastation that our Ibiza masthead lightning strike caused, we thought that minimising the risk of repetition was the best course of action, with the additional benefit of allowing us time to worry! We headed south, whilst shutting down all the boat electrics, switching off and unplugging (lots of the damage last time was via the negative side of plugged in items which were not switched on). After about an hour, the clear swath above us had vanished, the rain was sheeting down, visibility had reduced to about 100 feet, and we had no lights on. We stopped the boat and lay ahull with the mainsail giving us a bit of drift. This allowed us more time to really panic!

We sorted out the emergency stuff, handheld radio/ sat phone/ plotter/ gps/ grab bag/ emergency nav lights etc. After a moment’s thought, we left the flares in their locker – if Thor really had it in for us, then a timely flash whilst I carried the pyrotechnics would have given him a right old laugh! Then we took our different approaches to dealing with crises: Ali patrolled the boat looking for things to do with my reminders to keep her hands off the metalwork ringing in her ears; I picked the spot that I was in when we survived the strike in Ibiza last year, and sat down to think things through.

We had been keeping an eye on the radar for squall activity, and knew that we were the only vessel in about 100 square miles of ocean.  How on earth could we be so stupid as to stick a big metal finger skywards when Thor was angry? Had I done everything possible to minimise the damage when he got us? Nearly, but I could dismantle the wiring at the bottom of the mast – last time the lightning travelled down the wiring from the wind instrument to destroy all the navigation kit. After a moment’s consideration, I left it alone. If he had it in for me, then surely he would wait till I was unscrewing the connector to the VHF aerial (or whatever, there are about 25 separate wires to disconnect) and then fire one off to light me up light a Roman Candle! Best left alone, but note to self, could fit a quick release plug for next time, since this is becoming a habit.

For a couple of hours we sat waiting for the opera of light and noise to pass over. In the meantime, I could give due forethought to the important questions. How do you tell your insurance company that lightning has struck twice in under a year? How do we stand down the 2 crew members who are flying out to Bermuda to meet us? If sorting out the replacement of equipment in the Mediterranean was difficult and expensive, what on earth is it going to be like in Bermuda? If this happens to us again, how can we ever contemplate  sailing in the future?

As Thomas a Becket told Cromwell when he was in a bit of a bind, “this too will pass”, and so it did. The storm passed over us, we were not hit, and after waiting about 2 hours just in case he was hiding behind a cloud to smack us when we thought it was all over, we turned things back on, and shaped a course northwards. Plenty of wind and buckets of rain for the rest of the evening, requiring heavy weather waterproofs, and a couple of changes of underwear!

We haven’t made as much progress over the last 24 hours for obvious reasons, though we have sailed the same 8 miles three times! The winds abated overnight, and shifted even more southerly, and the sun has come out so it looks like we are going to have some of the light wind passage that folk talk about, if only to allow Mother Atlantic to have another laugh at our expense!

Son et lumiere,

Watergaw