Sunday afternoon Landyacht rings and suggests that as the wind is gtting up(with a few clouds in the sky) we go sailing on a nearby dry lake. Taking a quick look outside i concur and he says i'll be round in half an hour. Paul duly arrives and we load my yacht on the roof rack next to his, with wheels sail etc chucked in the back of his landcruiser. After asking what he'd prefer for hydration we stop at local grog outlet and i get us a king brown each. We travel about 16 kms south and turn off onto the track to Hannas Lake. Afew minutes later we meetup with Rob, a newby landsailer with his LLmini. Imbibing a couple of mouthfuls of hydration fluid(emptying said king browns) we start setting up our yachts.
The sky at this point has got noticably darker with the odd lightning strike on the horizon, when Paul yells at Rob. We think he is over hydrated as he reckons he can see the tip of Rob's mast glowing blue. Rob and I seriously doubt this and continue assembling our yachts. We all get out and rip around on the rough surface getting becalmed often as the wind starts to get gusty. Dispite the conditions I manage to clock around 57.5 kmh. Paul does a bearing and stops to change it and Rob manages to scare himself with speed.(We tell him it goes better with hard tyres) but says he has had enough. I continue to sail and as i glance up to see how the sail is reacting to my control I see a blue haze around the tip of my carbon(good elctrical conductor)fibre mast. Now I know a thing or two about elctricty and it seems that warm moist air rushing over a non conductive surface(sail) will build up a static charge, the same way that clouds build up static charges. We know that when the charge is great enough it will find a way to meet with something of opposite charge and so lightning is born. Suddeenly the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and with a loud crack my yacht's static charge disipates into the surrounding lake. At this time, i am about 600 mtrs from our vehicles and the wind dies totally, so I tow the yacht back all the time jumping as huge bolts of lightning thump into the lake some distance off. Getting back to the cruiser i decide to lay my lightning rod down when I feel the yacht discharge through my fingertips. Rob has his yacht on his ute and then it starts to rain. Paul and I hurriedly strip our yachts to put them on the roof rack but before w can accomplish that we are soaked to the skin. We start to tie them down whn the hail begins and Paul loses it laughing hysterically while I am left to finish tieing them down. By the time we are finished ther is about 100 mm of h2o on the lake and everything is super sticky and slippery. Standing still is hard to balance and moving you nearly lose your footing. All the while the lightning is still cracking down around us so we get into the car but so that we dont put too much mud etc in the vehicle we remove everything but our underpants.
Now driving on mud is not unusal around here but with a stiff wind blowing us around Landyacht nearly had to tack our way along to get to the shore and the track out. This Paul manged convincingly and we ralised how much precipitation had occurred. To this point the rain had lastd maybe 20 minutes tops. The rain stoppd - the lightning stoppd but theere was no way we were even thinking of going back to check it out. It must have looked "queer", two blokes bare chested wet haired driving down the road. Paul dropped me and my yacht off, borrowed a shirt to cover his nakedness and went home. I washed my muddy everything and then it started pelting down and lighting worse than before crashing around and me thinking I'm going to get called out(I work for the state lectricity mob-Western Power)
Now if by some chance on a warm slightly overcast windy Sunday afternoon in the future with a forecast of thunderstorms, Landyacht rings up and suggests that we go sailing I am afraid my answer will have to be----Pick me up in half an hour your'e on!

Too hard to read mate. Put some paragraphing in there.

I always proof read my posts too. But if it makes you happy, go for it.

Going out land sailing in those conditions is tempting fate (lightning) a little don't you think?? KAAZAKK

Lightning likes high, fast moving and electrically conductive objects and you fitted THAT bill.

Got my specs on today and am able to read it. Great yarn TP1. A photo might have been just too embarassing.

The mud on this lake is saline so its either hard and dry or like soap, when the wind and rain combined you would slide away if you went from the lee of the vehicle.
I only started laughing when the hail started.
nobody else seemed to be able to hear the carbon mast humming. when a bolt grounded a few k's away the humming stopped, then the mast tip glowed bright blue, yet I was the only one who could see it. it lasted for minutes, not just a flash,
later we all heard a spark crack and wayne jumped away from the yacht he was derigging.
when the rain hit full on, we kept feeling the concussions from bolts and heard the sizzles, but it had all got too funny to care.heres the before, just before and after, space of 20minutes.




down at kambalda they recorded 33mm in 3 minutes on the fancy St ives station.
when driving out one gust just pushed the Landcruiser sideways like a toy. what annoys me is that there is now a big set of wheelruts right through our sailing area.And I cant blame the local boguns

when the weather gets really hot you have to find ways to make sailing interesting

Test pilot 1 said...

Paragraphs are there to allow the reader to take a breathe wether real or figuratively.A long paragraph will force the reader to become short of breathe and heighten their sense of adventure etc. So, Cisco, that is why the paragraphs are of that length. Do you email the authors of books you read complaining about paragraph lengths?

No but I nearly asphyxiated reading your yarn!!