Positive lightning is rare and accounts for less than 5% of strikes worldwide. It’s 10 times stronger, reaches far further and is more lethal than regular old negative lightning. It can also come out of the blue on a clear day.
Sailing through lightning storms is inevitable here in the tropics, and it’s something you try to get used to. But we had never, in all our 20 years of sailing, heard anything like it.
Leaving Karimunjawa
With the weather and wind changing in our favour, it was time to leave beautiful Karimunjawa, an island in an archipelago in the middle of the Java Sea.
The strange calm heading south-east from Sumatra had morphed into a north-easterly. This was great and worked for us, so we set off on what we hoped would be no more than a three day crossing to northern Belitung.
On the first day, despite the overcast weather, the going was good. Leaving the lee of Karimunjawa, the winds picked up and we had a great day’s sail with the yankee poled out to port (or starboard depending on the wind angle). Consistently hitting speeds of seven to eight knots, SY Esper was loving the Java Sea.
Sailing in the Java Sea
The wind speed remained constant throughout the night, but by morning squalls started to roll in and were soon overtaking us.
We needed to move the poled-out yankee from port to starboard more and more frequently, but the good news was that our system was now honed and together we had developed a fast manoeuvre.
The Second Night
As night fell the bright lights from fishing boats on the horizon reflected upwards onto thick, dark clouds.
Sure enough, the rain and lightning started. It was going to be a long night…
That was one almighty front approaching us.
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