Carbon fiber mast may blow apart. They are strictly for racers. Stay metal for mast and stays. The general theory is that the stays,
lifelines, grounding well placed throughout the hull constitute a crude Faraday cage. We have four inch wide copper straps fore and aft, port to starboard. All are connected to large ground planes and to the
rigging.
We have a fuzzy on top of the main mast. It has survived three strikes, having protected itself well but not apparently anything else.
There are different types of strikes. Many are nearby and you may only be touched by a leader or indived charges. These are still damaging. A direct hit will light up everything. Our last hit was one of these, observed by a neighboring boat. Our mast was hit, jumped to two other
boats. Our
cabin glowed for considerable time. We
lost:
AIS, VHS, stereo, 18 glass buss
fuses, main 60 amp shore breaker, all wires in the bow fused, three LED
deck lights, all nav lights, windex vaporized, two VHS antennas gone, all diodes in one
alternator blown, several LED
cabin lights, Xantrex working but unreliable,
Simrad autopilot dodgy.
NOT
lost was the
Simrad NSE, backbone,
radar and graphing sonar and electronic barometer. These were protected as noted below. I reinstalled all new electronics this way as well.
Observations following our three hits are that electronic items that survived were all installed with a main breaker on the + "off". They also had a two pole manual mechanical air gap switch also "off". The two pole switch is as close to the device as possible, inches, and interrupts both plus and negative leads. Note that all modern stuff has a
software power switch and continuous connection to the boat common ground. This means off is not disconnected from boat
wiring. I also disconnect all
antenna cables. My mast
wiring passes through an industrial monster 64 pin connector. I use this to disconnect the mast entirely.
When we are away or if a storm approaches my electronics is nearly as separate from the boar as if it was in a box on the table.
Prior to this extra disconnect, all devices were destroyed every time. As the others have stated, there is nothing you can do to prevent a strike, especially in the open. I am convinced that what we do on ROXY reduces probability of damage.