Rebuking the Storm
Amazing Grace
John and Julie
Mon 7 Dec 2009 17:35
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Did I mention the excellent weather we've had for
our crossing and the number of people praying for our safe passage? Well,
here is an example of what I mean. These 2 pictures were taken early this
morning when I was on watch and demonstrates the blessing and covering that we
have had, continue to have and are very grateful for.
Take a look at the left hand side of this picture
below. The boat symbol in the middle is us and the big purple blob behind
us is a 'squall' cell. Its basically a big cloud which has rain and strong
winds associated with it. Typically the wind can go as high as 30-40kt.
The radar actually detects the rain so it is the rain you are seeing rather than
the cloud.
 I saw this cell coming towards us a good way off.
But this one was different from some of the others, I took our usual jink in
course (see picture) to the south but this storm continued to follow rather
than diverging from us. I could feel the wind strengthening while it was
some way off and reefed the sails. When I cam back I decided to take this
picture to demonstrate what you can be up against when sailing in these
waters. Since it seemed that the cell would track right over us and we
would get the brunt of the wind, rain and large seas, I decided to rebuke it and
commanded (in the name of Jesus) the wind to be calm and the seas to
calm.
The picture below is taken 3 minutes after the
first one. (Sorry for the quality - I hadn't realsied that I had shaken
the camera and there are a few raindrops on the screen). However it
clearly shows what happened. Within a minute the cell had neatly
split in two and it subsequently passed neatly down either side of
us. The wind hardly changed from what it had been - we experienced none of
the gusts that we have seen in thhe vicinity of other squalls. The rough seas
never came. We did get a few spots of rain as you can see from
the screen.
 Praise God and keep praying - thank you!
Interestingly and off the screen, there was another
boat "Starchaser" a mile or two to our north at the time. They also had a squall
pass very close to them at exactly the same time which did not diminish like
ours did - we spoke to them on the wireless later and they were just drying
out.
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