Some of us run Carbon Masts Hope this does not happen to others.

Man survives lightning strike on boat.
A Man has been rushed to hospital after lightning struck his catamaran.
The sailor was injured in the lightning strike just after organisers of a sailing regatta on the NSW central coast cleared competitors off the water during a severe storm.

The 50-year-old man from Victoria had his hand on the mast of a moored racing catamaran when it was struck, giving him a severe shock at about 2.15pm (AEDT) on Monday at Belmont, south of Newcastle.

The man was competing in the Australian National Championships for A-class catamarans when the race was stopped due to the storm.

Regatta spokeswoman Vicky Endert said that when bad weather set in, steps were taken to protect competitors.

"We thought the storm was getting close so we finished the race immediately," she said.

"The fleet was off the water when the lightning struck the water in the boat park next to the club and in the heavy rain the sailor who had his hand on the carbon fibre mast of his boat received a very severe shock."

The man was taken to Newcastle's John Hunter Hospital where he was in a stable condition

Carbon or alu, not much difference if your boat is hit while you hold on to the mast. Hope the guy recover fully!

Alu would have prbs been worse as he would have also had a nice shower of melted alu!

Carbon is actually worse, much better at taking the lightning stuff and putting it to the ground...

One could argue that that was what he was doing.
Much better if done with the proper gear.
You know lightning rod to a good earth.
He wouldn't of made a very good path to earth.
Like carbon aluminum is an exceptionally good conductor.
I don't see the difference in this situation.

Hope he is OK.

Am I to understand that the boat was moored at the time? Did that possibly contribute to the grounding potential?

Has anyone been struck while sailing recently? How does that frequency (vs. struck while moored/anchored/on the hard) compare?

"Yesterday’s violent thunderstorm drove the A-Cat Nationals fleet from the water. Victorian sailor Dave Brewer suffered a severe electrical shock and was thrown to the ground when a lightning strike hit the water while he was holding onto the carbon fibre mast of his A-Cat, in the boat park.

Brewer spent the night in John Hunter Hospital, Newcastle. He recovered quickly last evening and was determined to be back on the race course today.

But he was still waiting for hospital medical clearance at 13:00, when racing was scheduled to start on the second day of the A-Cat Pre-Worlds event.

The weather gods were on Brewer's side, with two Postponements ashore, as the winds flicked from north west to south west and then to east.

The 36 year old Lazarus arrived at Belmont Sailing Club with his wife and three children soon after the postponement flag came down, and was greeted by a media scrum.

The family's effort enabled him to rig his boat and get it into the water. Brewer was the last boat to leave the boat park after promising 'he’d come in fast' if there was another thunderstorm.

When the race finally started in a five knot easterly, five times world champion Glenn Ashby was first to the top mark. In an amazing effort on the second rounding, Brewer by now fully charged, was second behind Ashby and ahead of 1984 Tornado Olympic bronze medallist Scott Anderson and another Australian gun, Queensland Brad Collett.

Ashby, who had won the first race in the series before the storm yesterday, again received the gun ahead of Germany’s Bob Baier. Anderson was third, then came Brewer, with Steve Brewin challenging but finishing fifth. Andrew Landerberger was sixth, James Spithill seventh and Tom Slingsby 14th."

Some more:
The crews were busy pegging down their lightweight catamarans in the grass covered boat park next to the Belmont 16 foot Sailing Club, when grey green skies opened. The storm hit, with driving rain and forked lightning and thunder.

At 1415, Brewer had his hand on the carbon mast of his catamaran when lightning stuck the water directly in front of the boat park. In the driving rain, there was electrical current spread across the area and the 36 year old sailor was thrown to the ground.

He was rushed to the major regional hospital, John Hunter in Newcastle, by ambulance. Event organisers were told he was stable shortly afterwards by the medics.

That's pretty shocking.
Hope he is OK.

But did the fact that he was holding a carbon mast have anything to do with it at all? Sounds like he was standing in water and the water got struck. He just happened to be holding his mast when it struck. Or was he in a group and nobody else got hit?

To clarify.

He was standing on solid ground in the boatpark.

Lightning hit the water adjacent to the boatpark.

Quite common to get a shock from that kind of distance. A yacht I race on had all the instruments blown out from a strike 100m away.

And at the sailing club in Singapore, quite often the boat masts and rigging are tingling with electricity in a storm. Best to be under cover for sure in these situations.

I had a similar thing happen to me a while back. Ligtning hit a Laser a couple hundred metres away, in the water on the other side of the sailing club. My boat was sitting on the grass and I was touching my front beam at the time and got one hell of a jolt.
Scay stuff.

Ditto, except another sailor 5 yards closer to the strike was knocked unconscious.

Here's my Lightning horror story. About 4 years ago, my wife and 3 daughters were at the barn feeding the horses one evening. They had delayed the feeding because of a thunderstorm overhead. They waited in the house (200 feet away from barn) about 30 minutes after the storm had passed then went out to feed, the sky was now clear.

They are just finishing up when my wife feels something strange in her long hair, like when you rub a balloon in your hair, and she smells something like an "electrical" smell.

The 3 daughters are all in one stall hugging and brushing their favorite horse, with the youngest sitting on the horse bare-back while the other two are giving it treats. My wife says, "Hey, hurry up and get in the house, I feel something strange!" The 4 of them close up and run into the house.

My wife's father is in the house and asks, "What are you guys running from?" My wife says, "I felt an electricity in my hair and it smelled funny too..."

He says, "Nonsense, you are just paranoid, stupid women..." and he starts to walk out to the barn.

He gets about 3 steps out the back of the house and KA-BAM!! A HUGE bolt hits a tree right at the back corner of the barn, and ran down into the barn [we think, can't be sure where it hit].

He jumps back in the house and they wait another 5 minutes then they all go to the barn to check on the horses.

Well, that Favorite horse is dead on the ground, eyes wide open. The horse across the aisle is on his knees trying to get up but can't. He is dazed and his head is hanging down, just bobbing back and forth, he's drooling and incoherent. The other horses are all spooked and jumpy but otherwise fine.

Now here's the "Thank God for Catsailor" part. About a week before this barn strike happened I was reading a post here on Catsailor about a guy who had been trailering his boat through a thunderstorm, then when he got to his destination, he got out of his car and felt the static and smelled the electric smell. He got back in his car just before a bolt struck his boat or near it.

I had told my wife his story as that day we were having a thunderstorm [Florida is number 1 for lightning strikes in the world] and we were talking about lightning strikes. After the barn incident she told me that she remembered that story I had told her, and that is why she told the 3 girls to run into the house.

I belive that post on Catsailor actually saved my 3 daughter's lives.

Thank you Mary and Rick for keeping this board alive and free as a place to share good information.

The electrical "smell" would be something similar to ozone? Or something like an overheating electric motor?

Golf courses are notorious for lightning injuries. Once the ground is wet, that jolt will travel far from it's strike point.

Heck, I got a nice little jolt on an emergency scene in wet grass once. We were defibrillating a patient and I was about 2 feet from his legs (not touching the patient, mind you) crouching with one knee in the (wet) grass.

It didn't jolt me enough to knock me around, but it felt like I had stuck my finger in a 110V light socket. Kind of made my quadricep muscle "vibrate" for 1/2 second. Had I been crouching on my feet (leather boots with non-conductive sole), I would not have had this little experience. Mental note there...

I wasn't at the barn to smell it, I'm guessing it was ozone, with a static build up in the barn, it has a metal roof and metal bars between each stall. In the aviation world we don't call them lightning strikes, we call them "static discharges". When flying through a highly charged thunder cell the airplane will build up a static charge. There are static wicks on the tip of each wing, tail, and elevator, which are designed to disipate the charge before it builds up too much.

But, sometimes when the rain is very heavy and the cell is highly charged, they cannot dispate the static fast enough and "BANG" you get a large flash and big bang like a shotgun going off. Scares the crap out of the passengers. But a no-kidding lightning strike is quite rare, mostly because we stay the hell away from big thunderstorms!

I'm no expert but I've seen several TV programs on lightning. Some say it actualy starts from the ground up, when a large static charge is built up by the negative ions in a heavy rain/thunderstorm. That's why sometimes people can feel the static and smell the ozone just before the static discharge.

When a young fellow I liked storms and liked being in them, ubber cool until I finally got too involved and ended up being flattened by a lightning bolt which fortunately ( for me ) directly hit a young cow about 10 metres away killing the poor cow and two others. Quite a scary moment looking up and seeing nothing but blue light ( am I dead I did wonder ), downside was a damaged eardrum and hair that stuck up on end for over 2 hours rather like the cartoon character who puts his finger in the electricity socket. Saved by the rubber "Wellie" boots I was wearing it was a very close call.

A number of years later I was at sea bringing a boat back from Ireland and a very large electrical storm lay directly in front of us ( it eventually closed all the airways into Heathrow and Gatwick ), the smell of the electrically charged Ozone immediately rekindled memories of that earlier event. Sure enough within a few minutes the rigging on the boat started " humming " with static and lightning bolts seemed to be falling all around us. We took the the only decision available and diverted into a port and tied up against a much larger yacht, the thereoy being they have a taller mast.

Another nearly was I had been flying a glider near Dunstable and got caught on the edge of a storm, a fellow pilot from Dunstable took a direct hit. It totally super heated the whole fuselage and the glider was written off as it was a GRP glider and in their words "changed the whole feeling of the aircraft". The bolt hit the rear fin and emerged out through the front of the nose.

I'm no expert either but I believe Timbo is right. Lightning is an instantaneous discharge of static electricity that builds up in the earth and flows skyward. Everyone thinks it's a "bolt" from the skies and that it "strikes" something on the ground but I don't think that's actually right. Static (electrical potential) builds up in an area on the ground and when the potential difference is high enough to overcome the resistance of the air the potential difference discharges and everything that is electrically connected in the area (ie earthed) discharges with it. If you are earthed and standing near something that is not earthed or vice versa then whatever is earthed will experience the sudden discharge of the lighning while whatever is not earthed will remain with the static charge until it gets too close to something that is earthed or something that is earthed gets too close to it. I'm not sure if I'm making sense but the charge builds up slowly everywhere and discharges instantaneously in things that are electrically connected, leaving some residual charges behind which discharge through earth as they can - ie someone who is not earthed and is charged up touching a boat that is not earthed and has discharged or vice versa?