Dave, prior to my reading of the electrical book I had convinced myself that I didn't want my mast grounded--I had seen the same article and debate that you had. I do plan on sailing a lot in bad weather, though, since we're in preparation for eventual world cruising (not in Pixie--someday we'll move up to a bigger boat).
My only personal experience with lightning was living in a Victorian house on a 100' bluff overlooking a river. My house was covered by four lightning rods. My next-door neighbor had another Victorian, ten feet lower roofline, but it was HIS house that was struck by lightning, not mine. The prime purpose of lightning rods is to leak off the charge that builds up on the structure so lightning won't see you as the ideal place to strike. The passing of a bolt into the ground is merely a secondary protection. I have one really neat lightning rod in my collection that has a set of points cut into a flat copper disc, similar to sun's rays above a horizon. It was intended to provide better leakage via all those sharp points. Maybe I'll put something like THAT up on my mast <grin>.
Thanks for the input!
David Shaddock
----- Original Message -----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Saturday, July 15, 2006 9:15
Subject: Re: catalina27-talk: Lightning
To: [email protected]
> The topic of lightning has been one of great interest to me
> since buying a
> sailboat a few years ago. Open water, big metal
> pole, metal wires all over the
> place...seems inviting for a lighting bolt. I
> believe Boat US last year
> said that over the last ten years they only had 3 cases of
> lightning strikes that
> resulted in death. That was a little
> comforting. They also said that a
> survey showed (and I am going on memory so figures may not be
> exact) that in FLA
> your boat has a 8% chance of getting hit by ligtning and in the
> Chesapeake
> Bay it is 4%. Those are the two highest places of
> incidents. I sail the
> Chesapeake and 4% sounds like a big number to me.
>
> One article a few years ago in Sail or Cruising World a person
> recommended no
> grounding of the mast because that will draw the bolt to your
> boat. Of
> course, getting hit without grounding doesn't sound
> wise. My course of action
> probably will be just to carry a set of jumper cables on the
> boat and connect to
> the shrouds and drop other end into the Bay during a
> storm. That probably
> will work ok at anchor but not thinking that will work
> underway.
>
> So far I have only dealt with one electrical storm while
> underway (and that
> did not contain much lightning) and none while at
> anchor.
>
> I know the topci always "sparks" some debate...which seems to be
> appropriate
> with temps rising to almost 100ยบ this week on the Cheasapeake!
>
> Dave Tierney
> Celtic Pride, 5282
> 1983 C-27, Traditional
> Middle River, Maryland
>
