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Emergency lightning protection
Like the vast majority of fiberglass boat owners, I'm sailing around in a
boat with next to no lightning protection. I have run a heavy copper grounding wire from a chain plate to a couple of through hulls directly below. That will help bleed off some charge and slightly reduce the chance of being struck. If I am hit however, I imagine it will make the results worse. This is on my "someday" list and would be on the "already done" list if I sailed more to the south. I nearly 40 years of sailing in this part of the world, I've only once been in a situation that I was huddled below trying to figure out the best place to be when the bolt hit. That was long ago enough that I haven't gotten as worked up about the issues as I should. I don't know as much about the subject as I should since I've spent my professional life working with boats that have metal masts welded on top of metal superstructures welded to metal hulls. So, I throw out this idea for comment as a suggestion for either an interim solution or for cruising grounds where energetic storms are too infrequent to justify a major retrofit. How about a couple of plastic coated battery cables with a snap shackle on one end and a length of chain on the other. If it looks like you are going to get caught right in the path of an energetic storm, the kind where you'll want to either anchor or drift while you seek the safest place in the boat, just clip them to the shrouds and drop over the side. Nearly straight run down from the stays (at least if chain plates are not too far inboard), lots of surface area in the chain, plastic coated wire to protect the topsides. You wouldn't want to cruise around with this rig but it seems like it might at least keep a strike from sinking the boat by blowing a hole in it. -- Roger Long |
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