Drinking Water a Fire Hazard?!

Wednesday’s Photo Contest of the Day showed a burn hole in a vinyl cockpit cushion and we asked readers what unusual source they thought caused it. Dozens of people came so close we would have given it to them had Matt Satterlee of National City not guessed the exact answer: "I’m going to guess the burn mark came from a light source passing through a bottle of water and then onto the surface. This also happened in my moms car. She had a bottle of water in the console between the seats and it burned a hole in a couple of places in the passenger seat." For his insight, Matt won a Latitude 38 hat.

You could have knocked us over with an empty Evian bottle when we read the email from Aussie cruiser Joe Roggeveen that explained the series of photos. He sails aboard the Westerly Conway 35 Dream Catcher. "As friends and marina neighbors Pam Lau and Ted Berry of the San Diego-based Catalina 400 Shuang Yu were loading their newly purchased provisions in Apia, Samoa, they placed two six-liter plastic bottles of drinking water on their beautiful vinyl-covered cockpit cushions," Joe wrote. "The bottles sat there for most of the beautiful sunny afternoon. When Pam moved the bottles to the galley late in the day, she noticed two charred burn holes, through the vinyl and well into the foam rubber inside. The holes were a mystery as neither Ted nor Pam smoke.

"Later in the evening, while Pam, Ted and I were enjoying a coffee in the saloon, our attention was drawn to an intense pool of light adjacent to a water bottle on the galley floor. The source of the light was quickly identified as an LED light over the galley stove shining through the water bottle. Discussion soon turned to ‘What if it was the sun?’ No, surely not!

"Early the following morning, with the sun still quite low in the sky, we sat one of the full water bottles on a piece of newsprint on the dock. The pool of intense light on the side away from the sun was obvious. By lifting the paper’s edge and adjusting for a pool of maximum light intensity (around 1 cm diameter), it took  just a few minutes to burn a hole through the newsprint. As it was still quite cool and there was a small breeze, we did not get a flame, only smoke, but in the right conditions, a full-fledged fire would have resulted. The possible consequences are frightening, especially on a boat."

As many of the answers we received to the quiz demonstrated, there’s more than one way to burn a boat. Sabine Faulhaber echoed the most popular guess: "Someone’s reading glasses forgotten on the seat." Susan Leaf of the Endeavour 32 Soteria wasn’t the only one to suggest "Sun magnified through the isinglass in a dodger." A couple people even guessed a more nefarious source: "I’ve seen plenty of melted cushions via those darned burning seeds that seem to leap from joints at the least opportune moments," said one anonymous sailor.

But Tom Patterson of the Wyliecat 30 Dazzler shared a story that perfectly illustrates how sailors need to always be vigilant about fire safety aboard: "For eight years I owned Seraffyn (yes, that Seraffyn) and, as most know, she’s a pretty simple boat. To brush my hair in the morning, I had one of those portable mirrors that has a flat side and a magnifying side. So as not to look too much like a liveaboard, I would drape my towel inside under the deck for drying. One sunny weekend morning, I was sitting below with the hatches open and was startled to smell smoke. My quick investigation revealed that a hole was being burnt in my towel as a result of the sun reflecting off the magnifying mirror lying on the quarter berth. It was a coincidence that the mirror had perfectly focused the sun’s energy on the towel. It was a lesson learned on where not to leave that mirror!"