....
Lightning scares the crap out of me, sitting there in the cockpit at the
base of the big lightning rods, holding onto the metal wheel hooked to
the metal GROUNDED rudder hanging out in the sea, below.....

Me too. It is certainly the scariest thing we see regularly when off
shore. I routinely run a chain from my forestay to the sea (you can
do this on a catamaran) in the hope that it will direct the worst of a
hit away from the people on the boat. But, when I look at the
aluminum mast full of copper wires all nicely grounded to my engines
that are electrically connected to the sea I have doubts about how
much current will decide to go down a stainless wire. Do you think
that the resistance is small enough on stainless wire to dissipate the
static charge, or would it be better to ground the mast to the sea
with a low resistance wire to deal with the static?

-- Tom.