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Thanks for sharing these stories guys.  I know they don't have anything
to do with navigation, but they do have something to do with the sea,
which is a main reason I read this list.  And they are a bit magical,
at least to me.

Fred Hebard

On Nov 10, 2003, at 5:14 AM, George Huxtable wrote:

> Trevor Kenchington, in an interesting posting, said-
>
>> At sea in bad weather, at night, I have often noticed that the surface
>> of the water seems surprisingly bright. I have put that down to
>> streaks
>> of foam catching the light from my ship's masthead lights and
>> reflecting
>> it back.
>
> and added more detail about his observations on the night of a
> hurricane.
>
> My own observations may not relate closely to what Trevor saw, being
> in a
> different part of the world, at a different season, and under very
> different conditions. Nevertheless, here goes.
>
> ==============
>
> I got a fright, one black but pleasant summer night, out in the middle
> of
> the English Channel. No wind, so I had lit up my little diesel.
> Opening up
> the engine hatch, to give the stern-tube its regular gob of grease, I
> saw a
> brilliant blue flash that lit up the engine compartment: then another
> and
> another. This looked just like a big electrical problem, until I
> tracked it
> down to the transparent plastic pipe which connects the cooling-water
> inlet
> seacock to the pump on the engine. I then attributed the flashes to
> some
> form of marine life that was protesting against the indignity of being
> sucked through that pipe by giving off a flash of blue light. What it
> thought about its subsequent treatment, whirled around the rubber
> vanes of
> the pump, passed around the engine jacket, mixed with hot exhaust gas
> and
> spat out at the stern, I can only imagine.
>
> The blue display got more intense, showing up next as a bright blue
> glow
> from around the slipstream of the propellor, displaying the flow
> pattern
> just like a diagram in a hydrodynamics text book, only far more
> beautifully. I took it that the same organisms were responding to the
> pressure-disturbance from the propellor blades. Also, the puny bow-wave
> that my boat raises under engine was painted a glowing blue, and I
> could
> see, on the water surface well away from the boat, wide arcs of a faint
> blue light.
>
> Altogether, it was a magical night, one that my wife and I will always
> remember. We have seen similar effects since that night, but never
> anywhere
> near so intense. I expect that it's a phenomenon well-known to marine
> biology.
>
> In that instance, I'm sure that it related to individual glowing
> organisms,
> not to a general glow from the sea surface (although that's what it
> might
> have looked like from a distance).
>
> That's it (for what it's worth). I know it doesn't answer Trevor's
> questions.
>
> George.
>
> ================================================================
> contact George Huxtable by email at george@huxtable.u-net.com, by
> phone at
> 01865 820222 (from outside UK, +44 1865 820222), or by mail at 1 Sandy
> Lane, Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxon OX13 5HX, UK.
> ================================================================
>

   

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