Pointzero struck by lightning
Le Marin, Martinique – Colon, Panama
Distance: 1279M
Duration: almost 9 days (8 days 16 hours)
Average speed: 6.1 kts (whole passage) 6.7 kts (until lightning struck) 5 kts (after lightning, rest of the passage)
Wind : Force 5–6 Easterly (15–25kts) sometimes increased to 28 kts usually during night
Point of sailing: broad reach and run
Number of fish caught: 3 tuna (all in one day)
Marine life seen: dolphins (they came almost every morning or afternoon and were showing off by jumping, swirling around…)
Special events: Max’s birthday and lightning that struck Pointzero on the 7th day of our passage (more details bellow)
Sparcraft agreed for a complete mast and rigging check to be done later on (the plan is in New Zealand). The problem is not life threatening but should be looked at… That was good news for us… In preparation for the next passage we checked our genoa sail and found out that the leech part of the sail was full of holes – we contacted a local sailmaker and they were able to do the repair in 24 hours.
We left Martinique on 17 May at midday, the wind was good, kept main reefed 2 and had full genoa on. With new moon there was pretty dark during the first couple of nights even stars were not visible for a while because of the clouds. In those situations we used autopilot otherwise we steered ourself all day and night – we like it this way! We gybed all the way (once a day) as the wind was taking us either too south or too north.
For the first 3 days we didn’t use our generator to charge the batteries (solar panels and water generator were charging them instead). On the day four Andrea couldn’t wait any longer and generator went on (although didn’t have to) – he needed the generator on in order to use our new bread maker bought in Martinique. We’re very pleased with it, works really well, managed to bake different kinds of bread, even lemon cake…
Max celebrated his birthday during the passage. At 1000 there were around 30 dolphins nearby. It felt as if they came to “perform” especially for him. Beautiful jumps, turns in the air… they were divided into two groups (port and starboard side of the boat) and were jumping out of water at the same time – the splashing water looked like fireworks! It was really special… We told Max that the dolphins’ performance was arranged by the rest of the crew as a birthday present for him. That and the plane of Royal Netherlands Air Force that passed by in the afternoon very very low – we could see the pilot’s head in the window (he even tipped the wings to aknowledge seeing us). To Max’s delight he was spared mother watch duties on the day (replaced by our courageous skipper).
There were storms all around us on the night of 23rd May. As we couldn’t hear any thunders, we knew that the storms were a good distance from us. During night the cloud coverage increased and rain really started to poor down (“it was like sailing trough a waterfall”, Andrea said) then at around 0500 on the next day a loud cracling sound permeated our surroundings; a lighning struck us. We didn’t realized it until Max pointed to Andrea the fallen radar – luckily on the deck. Our radar is attached to a backstay and the backstay got “cut” in two parts. The longer one felt on the deck (touching Max’s shoulder) and the shorter one (around 4 m) was still attached to the top of the mast. First of all, nobody was hurt!
This is the backstay part that was broken by the lightning
Luckily the engine was already on (about 1 minute earlier); since the wind suddenly disappeared; and was not to be turned off until the anchor was dropped (one of the risks of lightning is of course electric components failing but once a diesel engine is truned on it only need fuel to keep on running). We tided the cables, secured them and radar to the boat. Our navigation instruments didn’t work, so we used a compass to steer. We realized straight away that we lost GPS so we didn’t have our position any longer. We switched on a hand held GPS and kept plotting our position every hour on the paper chart. Having around 200 l of fuel left and still around 200 M to go we kept an eye on fuel tank consumption as well. From then on we just tried to be as practical and pragmatic as possible. In order to support the mast we set up running backstays (aft the boat) and inner stay (front the boat) and decided not to use any of the sails (at least for now).
On the top right of the chart you can see all our plotted positions
After lunch when things settled a bit and our skipper confirmed that all our electronic equipment and all means of communications were gone (except a handheld VHF which has a range of around 8 miles at deck level), we lost the signal on our hand held GPS. No panic. We kept steering a course of 240 (having checked the main compasses with handheld ones) knowing that we should get to our destination or at least near land, once near it we would need to use coastal navigation techniques to estimate our position…we kept on plotting our estimated positions (our tachometer was not working so we didn’t know at what speed the engine was running and therefore our speed was again just approximation). Andrea got a great idea to check the secondary chartplotter (it worked) so he connected the spare GPS antenna to it and we had our exact positions back. We needed to save as much energy as possible (engine wasn’t charging any batteries and we weren’t sure if the generator worked; with engine running and fuel shortage running the generator was the last option,we were planning to do it once the passage finished).
Seeing clouds on the horizon at the sunset of 24th May wasn’t a great feeling. We kept thinking: “What’s the likelihood of being struck by the lightning twice in a row?” Once the sun was gone, the storms started again. We kept a good lookout for other vessel's lights. Ours were switched off (we had to save as much as possible for navigation approaching the canal) and we switched them on only when another vessel was sighted. At the end, we didn’t get hit that night!?
Our pilot book about Panama mentions that the currents of the coast in the area we were are much affected by winds… “during fresh W or SW winds, the rate of the normal E-going Caribbean counter current will be increased for 1 or 2 days after the W winds have ceased to blow. During prolonged fresh E winds, this normal current may disappear or even be reversed. A W wind usually brings rain and flooded rivers, so that driftwood may sometimes be found more than 30 miles offshore…” The book goes on mentioning that the current increases to 3 1/2 knots and that speed of 6 knots has also been experienced. When we woke up next day, our hearts sank. There was Westerly wind Force 4 at least and plenty of driftwood around us; that meant that we were sailing on a conveior belt that was moving in the opposite direction. We realized that our fuel shortage was becoming critical and in order to increase our speed we furled our genoa reef 2. Since morning until about 1700 we were beating against wind and current, tacking from time to time. By that time we already saw land… Then on further checking of our mast, Andrea noticed that she was bending forward too much, so genoa went down and we tried smaller genoa on the inner stay. The mast was ok but our course wasn’t. The decision was to keep the smaller genoa and the course and later on tack again. With that wind and current we would really struggle without any help from sails.
The part of the backstay that was still attached to the mast was swinging and kept on hitting the mast, shrouds and other lines on the way. We also wanted to put the main sail reef 3 out – to help our engine a bit. So, Max went up the mast to the top and his task was to attach the backstay to the shroud so it won’t move. He did the job brilliantly! ( It wasn’t his first time up the mast on this passage. One day we tried our smaller gennaker and it got tangled on our mast head light so Max went up and untangled it.) But unfortunately, the backstay was turned around our main sail hallyard. Sending Max or other member of the crew back up was no option as untangling that mess was very demanding, so we didn’t use the main sail at all.
The last sunset on this passage.
Just after dinner the wind finally decreased and we were able to make a good progress under engine alone. At that time we had some 40 odd miles to go and we were overexcited. Finally entering Panama canal and putting the word end to this passage. We spotted the entry lights to the canal very earlier on and we still had some 20 miles to go… There were so many ships around us, all of them lighten like Christmas trees. Colon – inside of the canal was lighten very well too. We quickly adjusted to those lights and had no problems with maneuvering around. Even communication with Cristobal (Colon) Signal Station, that monitors and manages the movements of the vessels in and around the narrow entry to the canal area, went pretty well. Finally, we anchored in an anchorage designated for sailing yachts and went to bed around 0400.
Panama Canal – breakwater main entry; ship leaving the canal for Caribbean. Photo by Max, taken from a top of our mast.
We are now in the Shelter Bay Marina and it looks like we’ll stay here for a while. Just today we finished compiling a list of all defects caused by the lightning and for now awaiting for some guidance from our insurance company and its surveyor.