The album of Ariel #422

[Commander227]

Yes...kinda.... The Ensign will not sink as it has positive floatation, so swamped is more like it. When I went to check on her in the morning she was awash to her rubrail. I had to run a 8hp gas trash pump to keep her high enough to cross the lake to get to the crane. A long weekend of grinding out the damage and laying up repairs and she was back in the water. The glass was mostly intact where the lightning went through the hull, but the resin was vaporized out of the the glass cloth.
Makes me happy I was not on the boat at the time.

[ebb]

Commander227,
Unbelievable!!!!!!!!!!

Mind a few questions?

I can understand a wire 'bonded' thru-hull showing the EXIT of the electric shock
but do the other EXITS seen in your photos have any relation to metal or the bonding system?
Or do you think they are entirely random? Could a wired in bilgepump have taken a hit and the jolt hopped to the hull?
I have a paper here that reports surveyors have noticed lightning EXITS along the TOP of encapsulated ballast. Any indication of this phenomena on the Ensign?

Did the strike fry electronics like we have heard happens to others?
How about the battery?


The thought of being aboard and struck by lightning isn't one bit funny. It's obvious to me that bronze thru-hulls should not be wired together - which was originally done I guess by Pearson to reduce galvanic corrosion. Of course anything going thru to the water side (and COPPER side) of the hull is going to suffer...like the sonar transducer and knot meter. And any wire (including interior mast copper wiring) or metallic surface is going to attract the strike. 'Side-flashing' is the danger for anybody on deck. Side-flashing is the strike connecting across space between metal structures.

I'm convinced that maralon thru-hulls are better than bronze from both the electronic and galvanic viewpoints. Maralon melts better than bronze.

ABYC Standards require that ALL METAL MASSES inside the boat be connected to the lightning ground - which is that large area sintered or plain bronze plate bolted to the hull.
On deck by the same rule, stanchions, winches, fittings, pipe frames must also be connected and grounded. Seems extremely difficult to do! And if aluminum is in the chain, opens the door wider to galvanics.
I would be tempted to keep the inside and outside systems separate, wouldn't you? Separate grounding plates on either side of the hull?

There's no guarantee the strike is going to hit the lightning rod you've erected on the top of the mast. I worry about the connection - copper and aluminum and the straight unimpeded path is the problem.
No guarantee the bonded and grounded system is going to be tracked by the strike!

It is said the safest place during a lightning storm is down below and away from ANY metal.
Because of metal in and around the cockpit
the most dangerous place to be on the boat is in the cockpit!

SO:
What have you decided to do?

[Commander227]

Ebb,
The exits appeared to be at random, the lead ballast was not grounded so I didn't have any problems with the keel cap. the fiberglass tube that the tiller post runs through had a few holes blown in it though.
My boat has only the one through hull otherwise its a clean hull. the bilge pump was fine as was the battery (thou the pump drained it in a valiant attempt to keep Serendipity afloat) I have no electronics on the boat, but the boat next to me lost theirs. The Mast head light, Windex and the screws that hold the masthead fitting were blown away, but the rest of the lights were fine, as was the mast wiring. I was worried about the standing rigging inside the swedged fittings so I replaced that.
My Daddy always taught me to drag the spinnaker pole in the water off the back stay when sailing in threatening weather.(I don't know if it would help, but at least you feel like your doing something)
As its a proven fact that lightning never strikes the same spot twice I feel quite confident that I'm in the clear from here on out.(I think that covers my other boats as well, don't you?)

[ebb]

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......????
__________________________________________________ ________________________________
*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

[CapnK]

Thought I'd post some "how to" pics of the paint-stripping process that evolved with much trial and error on my part. The only 'parts' needed are a citrus-based paint stripper (the brand I used is named "CitriStrip", and sells at WalMart for ~$10/qt), a wire brush, plenty of those plastic grocery bags, some good music to listen to, and some elbow grease. This is an easy, much cleaner alternative to sanding in order to remove the 40+/- year old, interior latex paint in the v-berth and cabin.

I tried a bunch of methods - the one on the container, some alternative strategies, and what I'll show here. Of what I tried, this is the quickest and by far the *cleanest* way to strip the paint as easily as possible. The other things I tried were either ineffective, produced a *lot* of waste, or both.

The method is simple: apply an even but not too-thick coat of the stripper to the paint you want to remove. Wait a little bit - 15 minutes or so - and then get busy with the wire brush.

The plastic bags are key here; without them, this job gets messy and frustrating. After you scrub a bit with the wire brush, it begins to load up with the removed paint residue. You will notice that it starts leaving clumps of residue behind at this point. Grab a plastic bag, put it over your non-wirebrush hand. Starting at one end of the brush, let the plastic bag kind of stick to the residue. Pinch the plastic bag so that it goes between the brush bristles and strips out the stripper residue. Leaving the bag stuck where it was, move your fingers over to the next row of bristles, repeat the residue cleaning. When you get to the end of the brush, you can fold the bag around the removed residue, and place the bag into a trash can without having gotten sticky old paint residue on your hands or your $100-nice-windbreaker-birthday-present that you should have not been wearing while stripping paint. (Hey, I was doing this in the winter, it was cold...)

Two passes of stripper and wire brushing will leave the hull almost bare clean, and ready for further work. I'll attach some in-progress and results pics to the next few posts that will show this all visually.

[CapnK]

This picture shows the hull in all 3 stages of the process. Below the old bunk, the stripping is finished. Above that to the right, one layer of stripper has been applied and then wire-brushed off. Forward of that area the original paint and mildew farm has been untouched.

[CapnK]

This is the same area. In this pic, the right side has been attacked twice with stripper and wire brush, and is finished. The left side is the original paint and mildew farm, post-first coat and wirebrushing.