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16What is the recommended procedure for dealing with a lightning storm while on a sail boat?
Filed Under (Sail) by admin on 16-02-2009
Tagged Under : Aluminum Mast, Recommended Procedure, Sail Boat
Thinking in terms of the aluminum mast used on most production sail boats being like a lightning rod, as well as the highest point/ object on the water.
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Having been a sailer for 40 years this is a question I’ve often considered. The problem is I’ve never been given a good answer. I can tell you sailboats are hit by lighting more often than you would think, yet the numbers of fatalities is very low. There’s one theory that the rigging, all the wires, actually act as a protective cone. But I’ve no proof it’s true. On a more practical vein, lower all sails, put the anchor out and go below. Don’t stay near the electronics or sit atop the engine. Good Luck!
avoid the storm if you can, lower the sails, put on your PFD and stay away from any metal or wiring.
Well in the first instance if you have the time to do so you would unplug anything connected to any instruments and antenna. If the boat is small enough you could consider dropping the mast, this is hardly practical in real life scenarios. It would not be smart to hang on to any metal, spars, rails and even a metal wheel. This is really moot if the boat is steel or alloy………..
In practice a strike will tend to give little warning and you will tend to be standing dazed and confused trying to work out what just happened…
It can be useful to enable a path from the masthead to the water, but this is not as easy as it sounds, as connecting dissimilar metals together and deliberately connecting this to the water is a problem in itself, with occasionally unpredictable results.
Surprisingly enough, having been in some pretty confronting situations with multiple continuous strikes on the water often within meters of the hull - like a strike every second for three hours!! I am not real concerned with this as a large problem. Of course boats get struck, but it is far less often than you might imagine, and in many cases does surprisingly little damage. The thing is that in the future strange and weird gremlins can and do appear at random - alternator rectifiers fail, starter motors can lose contacts, anything electrical can be affected just by being in the area. Hull fittings and keel bolts can be vapourised - not good for obvious reasons!! I’d be more freaked out if the yacht had carbon spars myself.
The odds are really tiny, the risk no more than any other sport - and a lot less than golf for instance.
If you google about this you will be quite busy for a while, good luck!