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Date Posted: - Sunday - 04/24/11 - 2:16pm
Author: Nicholas
Subject: Lightening Protection for wood masted sail boat
Any= one has experience or opinion about lightning protection of wood masted Mariner 40 or other similar boat. Anyone built one or equipped his boat with such?
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Replies:
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Lightning -- Paul - M31 #106, NJ, - Friday - 04/29/11 - 11:40am
My experience is that I have never owned a boat that had it - and I have never had a direct (or any) hit that I could find evidence of. My Mariner does not have protection and nothing in the boat is even "grounded" to keel or through-hull.
My opinion is that any benefit a lightning protection system offers is immediately compromised by the fact that the sticks are now "advertising" a path to ground and that whatever system is put on, it better be able to handle the traffic.
From a passing storm's perspective, our masts and shrouds are just vertical paths of a (relatively) few feet and the non-grounded delta potential between the top and bottom of these vertical paths is miniscule (again, relatively speaking). Getting struck is almost no more likely than if the sticks were horizontal...
Providing a solid ground to water from the bottom of the mast and then adding a little tickler on top of the mast, just seems couterintuitive to trying to avoid a lighning strike
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Potential -- gitano, - Monday - 05/ 2/11 - 1:51pm
Actually, grounding the masts brings them down to the same potential as the ocean surface. It does NOT broadcast a beacon to be hit, but rather makes is just a likely as the ocean surface to be hit, which is much less a chance than an ungrounded mast. There is a wealth of information on the internets - here is one such location http://www.discoverboating.com/resources/article.aspx?id=422
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Lightning -- paul M31 #106, NJ, - Tuesday - 05/ 3/11 - 11:00am
If the grounded mast acquires the same potential as the ocean, which I agree happens on a grounded mast, isn't this potential then lifted up 35 ft or more into the air above that ocean, while offering a path?
I maintain that an ungrounded mast maintains it's own potential, independent from water or sky. It's ability to accept or guide a current or accept and store a voltage is miniscule.
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Lightning and sailboats -- gitano, - Friday - 05/ 6/11 - 3:32pm
Hi Paul, Interesting thought. You should read this article. Lightning does not care whether a mast is grounded or not. It will hit either one with the same statistical frequency. By grounding the mast you provide a path for the strike, once the positive and negative branches connect, to ground without using other conductors on its way to ground through a boat. If the boat isn't grounded, it will likely blow a hole in the hull, or through any other thing in its path, like the crew.
Best regards,
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:H2eEyc7AbPYJ:edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/SG/SG07100.pdf+lightning+grounding+a+sailboat&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESj8u6uv0Wtsl4GyKezwy9Gv-cGvVlkQ_DGDm5EylurTaTud9LLTtP7Mbi2FXV845Yqc5BWIFIDRpXNTMzwaRvQnlNYuCAcNBV6eqBS8X52wjsiMCeICWUE6mx8OtI4mWuwtzqJK&sig=AHIEtbRALbsnzIFURWJfeum_5NMcVrw9nw
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Lightning Protection -- Gene Trentham, - Saturday - 04/30/11 - 8:19am
For what it's worth. I never saw any evidence of being struck by lightning until I replaced the wood spars with aluminum. First year it got hit. Then I realized they needed to be grounded. I did that and have never had a problem since. I've been mooring the boat in the same location for 23 years.
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Lightings and sailboats with wooden masts -- Nicholas, - Sunday - 05/ 8/11 - 1:45am
Thank you Paul, Gitano and Gene,
All very valuable replies to me. I think, there is no obvious conclusion in this subject, the amount of information is huge and more you read, the more confusing it is. Gene's reply about changins his must from wood to aluminum is an interesting example.
Since there are about a couple of hundred Mariner sailboat sailing the oceans with wooden masts and there was no original factory installed lightening protection on any of them, I suppose Paul's opinion is valid.
Again, I appreciate all of your replies,
Fair Winds
Nicholas
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