What Happened to the Grouper Post?

With Grouper season opening just a couple of days ago I be you were expecting a Grouper post right?  Well, no can do.  With the opening of Grouper Season there was also an opening of the skys.  We had some spectacular lightning and torrential rain.  that all that unusual for the Keys.

What was unusual was the computer failures following the lightning.  At Pancho's Fuel Dock ther was a nice 80 foot or so yatch that spent the night and fueled up in the morning.  When they prepare to head out, they noticed that their ship's/yatch's computer system would not start any of the bildge pumps.  So they had to jump out the computer system and install manual switches for the pumps.  Boring boat stuff right?

Well across the canal, Burdine's Marina had a complete computer failure an could not pump fuel.  Two computer fairly close together with simultaneous major malfunctions during a kick butt thunderstorm.  No, lightning did not strike both of the computers.  So what happened?

Dark Ligthning  Dark lightning is also known as a terrestrial gamma ray burst.  The super high static electrical energy of the Thunder clouds produces not only Electrons but their anti-matter counter part, Positrons.  When the two collide they mutually annihilate producing high energy gamma rays.  Gamma rays are the type of nuclear radiation that requires the thick lead shielding to prevent damage.  With the cloud gamma ray burst directly over head, it is a likely cause of the computer failures.  

Moral of the story; have manual back-ups for critical systems. 

Since I was a bit busy avoid both the Dark and white lightning, plus dealing with horizontal rain finding every possible opening into the RV, today was a clothes washing and hunt up missing stuff day.  So any of you want to risk a quick fishing vacation between weird weather events, give me a call, I think the worst of it is over for this week.

Marathon in the Florida Keys should be your next fishing vacation destination. Join us for charter fishing, fishing guide trips or our fishing 101 so you can fish on your own with better success.

Tight lines,

Capt. Dallas