St elmos fire

Thanks Des.
I have to type in my name and password log in TWICE before it gets me to the site. Then all the clicking of posts goes on ! I'm a patient woman but......
Cappy. Thanks for your suggestion. I 'm coming round to that idea. Leaving and then returning .
regards
Brenda

Brenda , just a thought, is it just this site you are having problems? I had an issue a while back and it was traced down to a keyboard problem the letter E at times became hit and miss!!! just a thought.

45 Years at sea and on rigs and never saw St Elmos fire, but many years ago I was climbing in the alps and we were walking along a mountain ridge and the guy in front of me had his ice axe tied on the back of his rucksack and I could hear and see sparks coming off the ice axe tip which was pointing up in the air small sparks but easy to see. In the mountains in Scotland I have seen the broken spectre, this is when you are in sunlight and are there is mist below you and your shadow is cast on the mist and around the shadow you can see a rainbow effect.

I was on focsle lookout as a JOS going down the east coast of USA when it all lit up, The vessel had a degausing line going right the way round the deck, and as I had only asked about it a week before I thought something had activated it, being only a 17 year old I practically cr*pped myself.
Wonderful sight though and the only 15 minutes of elmo I have ever seen.

About the only thing I saw at sea was when conditions were right, phosphirescience trailing behind the ship, lovely. However, quite a few times we would see it, when the seas were calm, while my wife and I were night scuba diving and the action from our fins caused an action to the calm surface, similar to a ships wake (but obviously smaller) which I found out was caused by an organism like plankton, that are irritated by the wave action and emit a spark and of course there are millions of them. We would go up to between six or ten feet below the surface, turn off our dive lights. roll on our backs, so we are looking up and behind us, and fin and watch the trail of glowing phosphorus trailing behind us. Sheer Magic. Louis Armstrong's "What a wonderful Word." comes to mind: Excuse me Louis, but I'm going to change the words:

"I see glows from two...Just me and you...We're all alone in the ocean blue...And I think to myself...What a wonderful world..."

Memories, don't you just love em. Rodney

In 1973 coming into the Malacca Sts. on the bridge of the Sugar Importer, I had a similar experience to this. I would have doubted what I was seeing except that the Lookout on the wing of the bridge came flying in with a shout of " what the fxxk is that". It was hard to give much of an answer!