Lightning strike.... finally a victim

[gwp]

Heard the snap from inside the house this afternoon and got a sick feeling that it struck my mast. When the worst weather passed I went to check and upon removing the hatch boards was met with smoke throughout the cabin. The bilge pump was blown apart and there is a hole in the electrical panel where the bilge switch used to be. Several other problems but mainly concerned about my keel. The bolts and all else look ok in the bilge and not taking on water. Assuming Catalina runs a ground wire from mast to keel bolts to direct energy to ground but fear that it could have blown off a piece of the keel..... Guess I'll take a dive under tomorrow.  Any ideas of other things to look for appreciated. Stu... Thanks for the crutchfield link as I finished installing new kenwood stereo two days ago and it's fried.

[sailaway]

Catalina does not bond the mast to the keel bolts wish they did. My Cape Dory mast was bonded to a metal plate on the bottom of the hull. Bonding of mast for lighting has always been a big debate. Charlie

[Ken Krawford]

I'd encourage you to contact your insurance company and report the incident.  They will want you to have the boat hauled to inspect the entire hull for damage.  The lightning had to exit the boat somewhere.  Check ALL your electronics and see what isn't working.  I went through a lightning claim last year and it was definitely a learning experience.

[KWKloeber]

Assuming Catalina runs a ground wire from mast to keel bolts to direct energy to ground but fear that it could have blown off a piece of the keel..... Guess I'll take a dive under tomorrow. 

You know what ass/u/me-ing does 

Always a controversy whether or not to bond, using the mast top 'whiskers" to dissipate energy, etc...

Unless the keel is in direct contact with water (i.e., like a bond plate,) then the usefulness of bonding to the bolts is questionable.)


Ken

[Fred Koehlmann]

Sorry to hear about the lightning strike, but you can count yourself fortunate for not being onboard at the time. That's one thing that worries me the most when being out on Dolphina, the fact that she's not grounded.

When I was younger my dad's Grampian 26 was struck by lightening, just minutes after he asked me to disconnect the VHF and CB antennas. Sounded like a cannon going off within the boat. Then we saw fiberglass confetti drift down into the cockpit. It was what was left of the antenna. We were fortunate, since Grampian did a full and complete grounding of the boat during construction, all shrouds, stays and mast were grounded with thick twisted copper cable to two brass or bronze plates, one on either side of the keel. No holes in the boat, just slightly shaken crew onboard.

Interestingly we were rafted up with a CS27, which had a much taller mast than we had, but they were not grounded. He in fact was thankful that they had tied up with us, considering what could have happened to them if they had been hit. So of the two schools of thought: get grounded to be safe, but also potentially become the preferred path; or not get grounded and risk being caught in the path, I prefer the first.

The difficulty of the first however is two fold, if the job is not done correctly, you can still take damage, and in reality the strength of a strike is variable and could be more powerful than what your grounding system could be designed for. Secondly there is the danger to feel complacent and overconfident if you are grounded, and that could make you more reckless or caviler about the dangers.

From a boat builder's perspective, if they provide a grounding system, they potentially take on much liability, from both sides. People that could say they were hit because of the system, and from people that were reckless because they thought they were protected but still got damaged. So the way to avoid risk these days is just to stay out of it. So alias not grounding on the Catalina. After we bough Dolphina, we tried to get someone to ground the boat. It was close to impossible. No one wanted to design the system and then no one wanted to install it. All seemed concerned about how uncertain the idea was. It seems that if you want your boat grounded, you need to do it yourself. It a big job and may have to wait until I'm retired. In the meantime, we try to avoid thunderstorms.

[gwp]

Good info Fred. This would delicately be a worthwhile considering the frequency of thunderstorms here on the good coast. I was able to dive under yesterday and all's well down there thank goodness. This is the strange part..... There was only one strike close by and this one strike hit a pine tree and my mast which are approx 200 feet apart. The monster pine was split top to bottom. I guess the strike forked and the pine serving as the better ground took most of the energy. Had the mast took it all I'm sure I'd have more damage.