Lightning and Sailboat

[unbusted67]

I recently had a skipper cancel a daysail due to warnings of thunder storms. I was wondering what is the deal with lightning and sailboats? What do people do to avoid being hit by lightning? Does the fact that you have a huge metal rod sticking up in the middle of the ocean greatly increase your chances of being struck (I feel dumb asking this)? What do people do if they are struck, can you rig a mast to act as a lighting rod to disperse electricity? I know that there are other dangers that come with sailing into a thunder storm, high, squally winds and such, but I am mostly wondering about the electricity part, the theory behind it.

[JusDreaming]

Originally Posted by unbusted67

1.What do people do to avoid being hit by lightning? 2. Does the fact that you have a huge metal rod sticking up in the middle of the ocean greatly increase your chances of being struck 3. What do people do if they are struck, 4. can you rig a mast to act as a lighting rod to disperse electricity?

As some one who has been struck, I can answer a couple of your questions.
1. Pray and keep your insurance current
2. Yes, it does increase the chance, but we were in a slip
3. The first thing we did, was say " Mother Fck we just got hit" then we vibrated a bit then check to see if the bilge pumps were working!!!!!!!!!
4. Some people will connect a large wire to the mast and drop the other end over the side, or lightning protection IE: dissipators
Lightning Protection on Sailboats

[cat man do]

Originally Posted by unbusted67

1] What do people do to avoid being hit by lightning? 2]Does the fact that you have a huge metal rod sticking up in the middle of the ocean greatly increase your chances of being struck (I feel dumb asking this)? 3]What do people do if they are struck, can you rig a mast to act as a lighting rod to disperse electricity? 4]I know that there are other dangers that come with sailing into a thunder storm, high, squally winds and such, but I am mostly wondering about the electricity part, the theory behind it.

1] Build a power cat

2] Absolutely, we got drilled big time

3] We had our outboard in the water, it toasted the fuses, melted the rubber bush around the prop so we had no drive, fried all the electric's and elctronic's except the cheap fluro and nav light's and actually blew wiring out of the glassed in conduits.

4] we sailed back [couple of hundred miles]under heavily reduced sail as we couldnt trust the rigging wire, and had it all replaced under insurance.

Dave

[Alan Wheeler]

Hi Unbusted, if you would like to do a search, lightening has been discussesd a lot here, and there is some very good discussion on it.