How about connecting a 20 ft piece of #1 cable to the backstay and
dragging that around.


On Tue, 6 Jul 2004 06:07:38 -0500, "Keith"
wrote:

Surface area doesn't really matter for a lightning ground, edge length does.
The charge will dissipate along the edges, so a long piece of copper foil
would do much better, maybe 2" wide standard stuff. Like Jim said, nothing
is foolproof, but you can always help your friend the lightning bolt out to
find his way to a home in the water! Bigger is better for cable, try to keep
any turns to a 12" or so radius, and you can probably do better than no
protection at all.

I have a similar system... lightning rod to cable that goes overboard at the
dock to a copper plate with lots of cuts in it (for more edge area) that
sits on the bottom. I can't prove that it ever worked, but one time I pulled
it up and the plate was gone. The cable looked like it had been cut clean
off and was dark. I know it didn't pull out of the connector since there was
no exposed wire. Either it did it's job while I was gone, or somebody on my
dock needed a crappy looking piece of copper sheet!