Lightning strikes just once, right?

We were going to let you know how wonderful it is to be anchored in Gloucester’s working harbor (N42 36.6 W70 39.4) or how great it was to spend several days with Mom and Dad while they put us up at Brown’s Yacht Yard here in town (N42 36.7 W70 39.0). We liked it so much, we moved back out to the anchorage and spent a few more days biking the lovely rural roads between harbor towns and enjoying the friendly folks of Cape Ann. Then we thought we might reminisce a bit upon our one year anniversary of starting this cruise (July 24th). Things change quickly, though, and instead we’ll be telling you about how we got hit by lightning on Saturday afternoon at 5:43:48 (one of our clocks is frozen in time).

We had been sitting outside for a few hours watching the dramatic thunderstorms passing west of us and enjoying the light show. Things had quieted down and I went inside to read and Reinhart remained outside and was just checking the radar on-line to see if any other storms were on their way. It was very bright and very loud at the same time, and then very quiet except for the tremendous ringing in our ears. While we were starting to figure out what was affected we heard a boat hastily pulling alongside and came out to find the harbormaster and his assistant getting ready to board the boat. You should have seen how relieved they were to see two healthy people emerging into the cockpit. They said a very large bolt of lighting hit the top of the mast followed by plumes of smoke rising from it; they ran out of the office and came over right away assuming that we might be hurt. I hadn’t really thought we were actually hit until they told us. It appears lots of folks saw it because our neighbors dropped by one by one letting us know how spectacular it was.

Some very important things are working just fine, like all of the through-hulls, the bilge pump, the water pump, and the engine; lots of other important things aren’t working, like our electrical panel, inverter, solar array charger, instruments, VHF radio and refrigerator. We are surprised by what has been spared, and surprised by some of the things that were taken out. Anything that was on top of the mast is gone; we found bits of our anchor light and windex on the deck. This computer and its charger are fine and our recently activated cell phone is fine (the charger was fried, but we had a spare that was unaffected). Luckily we recently purchased a back up mini inverter and will be able to charge the computer and phone from our house batteries and it appears we are still able to charge our house batteries with our engine.

We’ve posted a picture of Maia in Gloucester on Friday; you can zoom into the top of the mast to see what was blown off 24 hours later. We also posted a picture of the part of the anchor light we found lying on deck afterwards. An insurance rep should be out on Monday to start the process of getting us back up in working order. The harbormaster has been by several times checking on us and the local coast guard is also aware of our problems. I expect we’ll be at a dock for quite some time once things are looked at on Monday. Good thing we like Gloucester so much, I believe we may be here for a while. We’ll update you on our continued adventures in Gloucester and from now on, Chuck says you can call us Sparky and Flash.