I recall, back in 1989, flying from Mount Pleasant airport to the South Georgia as a navigator in the Hercules C-130 to drop airmail. As we descended into the bay (right to left, below) the pilots flew the aircraft towards the centre of the expanse of water, where an inflatable boat was positioned nearby.
The plan was to descend to 250 feet above the water and then deploy the mail sacks (blueys, shown below, if you can remember them!) so they would land near to the boat. The issue was of the wind shear in this area, which, so close to the Antarctic, was generally severe if not awful. The wind off those hills could vary considerably.
One clue was to always look at the surface of the water. You could see from the ripples whether the wind was affecting that area, as the gusts churned up the surface, or left it becalmed.
I noticed the effect yesterday, to a degree, at Baitings Reservoir, in West Yorkshire, a few miles (!) from Antarctica.
So if we could keep in that area of calm we wouldn’t get affected by the wind shear. Pretty limiting eh?
So in life, we could remain safe within our confines, not willing to go outside because of what might buffet us; or we could remain circling within the calmer area, safe that we won’t be rocked; or we could just go out there and see what the conditions were like… The mail had to be dropped – it had taken us a number of hours from the Falklands to get there, we had descended from 25,000 feet to low level, it seemed little point giving up there and then. At least give it a go, for their sake.
What of us in Church? Shall we keep doing what we have always done and remain safe? Is that being becalmed?
Or look outside, see what the ‘other’ might see of us, not go too far but check out the locality?
Or because we have the Good News, share that with others, despite getting rocked a bit, why? for their sake.