Lighting is pretty damn hard to protect against, as predicting the path
a priori is very, very difficult. As a storm approaches you can take
some preventative action by placing sensitive electronics such as GPS,
Radios, etc in a Faraday cage (info on web on how to build it), but
anything that isn't inside it is still subject to damage including all
the wiring and permanently mounted devices such as the radar array.


One critical issue is to insure that the path taken by the lighting does
not include going directly through your hull as this could result in
catastrophic loss. Make sure your chain plates are grounded, that there
is adequate grounding plates to your engine, mast, etc. to avoid the
possibility of the lighting burning through the hull on its way to the sea.

One other sure fire solution is to place a golfing 4 iron at the top of
your mast. As any golf pro can tell you, even God can't hit a 4 iron. :-)

Cheers,

Robb



purple_stars wrote:
i am curious what you do for lightning protection to keep your boat's
electronics from getting zapped in the middle of the big ocean. i know
you can install lightning protection into the boat, that is, basically
a lightning rod and ground plate, etc, but that wasn't really what i
was wondering. what i am curious about is do you have some kind of
procedures you go through when a storm approaches that has a lot of
crackle in it, some procedures for disconnecting sensitive electronics
or somehow disengaging them from the boat's electrical system so that
they won't suffer if the boat gets hit ? i guess that might be
non-sense since stormy times are exactly when you most rely on a lot of
those electronics but i thought i would ask. i was just curious.