Seeing Things at Sea

Those who sail offshore know that you see seemingly inexplicable things at night. It’s true with even the most experienced sailors. Take the report of Brit Brian Thompson, who a dozen or so years ago was stationed in Sausalito taking care of and crewing aboard Steve Fossett’s 60-ft trimaran Lakota, but who now has 220,000 ocean miles under his belt, and is currently crewing aboard the magnificent 131-ft French trimaran Banque Populaire V in pursuit of a new Jules Verne Around The World Record.

"There was a most bizarre light in the sky Christmas Day night," blogged Thompson. "It was like one of the searchlights outside a nightclub, shining up into the sky from the south. It went from the horizon vertically up to about 25-30 degrees, so not as high as those searchlights, but had that same kind of narrow, white beam. It was really odd and stayed up there all night, so everyone saw it and had a different opinion on what it might be. It did not spin around like the stars, it stayed vertical. The only thing that could be agreed upon is that nobody, in all our miles at sea, had seen anything like it. Yvon, in his usual humorous way, suggested that it was an alien landing staircase. Fred thought it might be a solar reflection effect of Antarctica. It looked something like a giant comet to me, but not spinning in the sky put paid to my theory. Part of the great charm of being at sea is to view unusual things."

If you’ve seen any mysterious things at sea at night, we’d love to hear about them. Even ones that had obvious explanations come the light of day.

It’s been years since we’ve seen Brian, but we remember him as one of the most mellow and competent sailors we’ve known. If Banque Populaire makes it across the finish line nonstop, it will be Brian’s fourth nonstop trip around the world. To date he’s set 27 sailing records, and this would be yet another new one.

Banque Populaire is currently racing up the east coast of South America off Rio, with a reasonable buffer to break the record set in March of ’10 by Franck Cammas and crew aboard the 103-ft trimaran Groupama. You’ll remember that record of 48 days and seven hours was set in part because of the navigation expertise of Northern Californian Stan Honey.