Hi Asmat. Hey, you've made great progress getting to La Corunna; congratulations. We had a slow trip down the French coast as you may have seen from our posts. La Rochelle is working out well. We should try to get together next season to compare notes, but no doubt you'll move on before we get to LC. Hope the mast wiring went well; let me know how you did it!

Off topic, but just read your profile and see you have links with Hull where I was born. Interesting to see that XXX is a Wylo 32. The last time we sailed down the coast of Portugal we did so in company much of the time with a gaff-rigged Wylo 32. He'd wanted to use junk sails but decided ti stick with what he knew. Glad you made the jump. Ian and Kathy went on to sail round the world but found the gaff rig a pain at times.

Hi Asmat, Arne

I keep an eye on the Freedom web site (www.freedom.org) as my Freedom 39 has CF masts with an old (1988) lightning protection system which means both masts are linked by a flat. braided 1 inch wide cable to ground plates. Little else is linked in. So much stuff has been added over the years that I doubt the system would pass muster these days, given that specs have been uprated.

http://www.marinelightning.com/FAQ.htm#CommonMisconceptions

is a link that was posted recently. Its to a site that offers seemingly good advice. We had a few lightning episodes this summer on our cruise to La Rochelle, France, enough to get me reading up on what I should do...

Hi Arne, my aluminium masts will be earthed to my steel hull. I would still expect to suffer damage from as lightning strike in spite of this. My Wylo has a wood deck, so she is not perfect as a Faraday cage.

It seems that carbon fibre aircraft components have a fine mesh of metal wire moulded in. The idea is that this forms a protective Faraday cage, at the cost of a small weight penalty.

The Sponberg site is interesting Brian. I didn't know lightning deflectors now have a rounded tip. I used to have one of those stainless steel toilet brushes. That seemed to work: I never got struck. I heard about a boat that had one fitted and was the only one in the marina to suffer a strike, though. Given the current (pun intended) state of knowledge, a witch's broom might be a better description.

Cheers, Asmat

Does carbon fibre attract lightning? I'm considering reinforcing my upper battens with carbon and have been warned that ungrounded, it would increase the possibility of a strike. Googling has produced a lot of conflicting blah, which suggests that this may be a myth. A lot of boats have carbon fibre masts, including one I converted some time ago, but I made sure that it was well grounded.