I think what they mean is that when lightning strikes your Ensign again
It probably won't put holes in it in exactly the same places
I agree with your Dad.
Trailing something metallic in the water is the best bet.
Spinnaker poles nws, I think the relatively simple battery cable trick with small (of some optimum size I don't know) flat copper plates brazed to the end of the cables on each one is the way to go.*
If the idea is to quide your personal strike using your mast then the lightning rod has to have special attention as to how to connect it to the mast and/or shrouds and stays.
At the moment I'm thinking that given the chances of getting hit versus the chance for galvanic corrosion using copper around aluminum, especially 30 feet up the mast where you don't go every day,
maybe the direct connections to the mast, to the shroud tangs, to the toggles for the fore and backstay
should be made with STAINLESS STEEL WIRE or cable.
Why not? Minimizes corrosion. I would still consider the usual precautions of s.s. to s.s. and s.s. to aluminum by using standard isolating tefgel and UHMW tape in making connections. Ten million volts is going to vaporize any piddly corrosion precautions!
Of course, thinking 'lightning rod' means that along with trailing the standing rigging one other track point should be included. And that is from the base of the mast. Another one or two battery cables from the mast base also trailed overboard.
Everybody agrees that when you get hit by lightning you have to expect damage. So I guess the system design should try to minimize structural damage and try to get expected damage onto sacrificial easy to replace stuff.
What do you think......????
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*Visited a lightning ground product site - aimed at another wallet size than ours. They had cast bronze tubular affairs for the trailing end that looked like strange drain fittings. Playing 'poorman substitute' I thought that lengths of copper tube might be used with multiple staggered sawcuts lengthwise in the tube - kind of crudely imitating what they had. Multiple sharp edges seem important. And the grounding legs would maybe store better.
By the way scintered bronze does not work well as a ground. In one of Casey's books he suggests a long bronze strap rather that a rectangular plate. More fastenings but more hydro.
And there is a minority of sailors who believe that attracting lightning to the mast with a lightning rod is not a very smart thing to do, either
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