Water shock - what does this mean?

[Lisa Woodburn]

OK- I thought a friend of mine was totally drunk when she reached in the lake water while we were under sail & she said the water "shocked" her. Then a couple of us tried it and surprisingly, we really did feel a static electric shock from the water! I've never tried that before....What does this mean? There were rainstorms in the distance, but no lightening or thunder...and just a light rain that night, no lightening, etc.Anyone? (And no, we weren't all drinking while under sail that day!)Lisa

 

[Bruce Harkness]

Static charge

The boat is a capacitor, it stores charge. The wind on the sails builds a charge much like rubbing your shoes on the carpet. If you notice, gas and oil trucks drag something on the ground to dissapate this type of charge for safety.

 

[Brian Ranniger]

My experience with electricity

That reminds me of a strange experience I had. I was stepping the mast and rigging my catamaran at a local lake. The area for doing this was about 100yd from some high voltage power lines. The huge ones that are 50 or so feet up. When I was installing the bronze plugs in the hulls I would get a shock about like you'd get from your distributor on your car. It took me a while to realize this was from the power lines nearby. Rather scary to say the least. The mast was down at the time. This wasn't really related, but interesting anyway.