<<Yeah, I’m an engineer, bo no one truly understands all the mechanisms of lightning>>

  I've been asking insurance companies, thinking that their huge pool of data might be a help, but they don't take a stand on whether or not lightning protection helps.

  I get that if you get struck, and you have an aluminum mast, it's great to have a huge cable that will direct the charge through the boat and into the water.  That's better than blowing a huge hole in the hull.

  But does that make the boat more likely to get hit because that tall mast is now grounded?

  More importantly, what about carbon fiber masts?  The equivalent is probably to have a 0 gauge cable running the length of the mast, and then somehow into the water, but that sounds like a huge amount of weight aloft.


        - Mike

 

Not to be pedantic, but it’s electric field, not EMF, lightning not lightening, and shear not sheer. 

EMF is simply voltage. Lightening is the process of making something lighter, and sheer is the curve made by the upper edge of a hull.

Electric field, in this case, is determined by the potential difference over (divided by) the distance between the two sources of charge. Move one source closer to the other (the charge-bearing clouds are blown your way) and although the voltage difference remains the same, the field increases up to the point of (dielectric) breakdown, and electrons leave the mast and go streaming up to the clouds.

Yeah, I’m an engineer, bo no one truly understands all the mechanisms of lightning. ;-)

Mike

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