[ppsavage]

We have a 62 ft sailboat with a tall rig. The top of the pigstick is 98 ft above the waterline. When we built the boat in England, we installed two "No Strike" ion dissipating rods. They are "bottle brush" devices that are connected to the Fredrickson sail track. The sail track is connected to the mast step which is connected to a keel bolt with copper tape. The chain plates are also connected to the keel bolt with copper tape.

We have sailed the East coast, from New England to the Chesapeake and in FL and Tampa Bay and have been in and around many thunderstorms and have never been hit. We've had instances of boats very close to us at a pier or at a mooring, with much shorter masts, which have been hit.

Ion dissipators are intended to dissipate or "bleed off" the electrical charge which builds up during a thunder storm before the accumulated charge creates a "leader" to the cloud which channels the high energy strike.

A quick web search found two sites of interest: LEC GLOBAL has lots of engineering information about lightning strike prevention. Their ion charge dissipators are a bit unwieldy for most boats! :-)

Northsea Navigator's products are almost identical to what we have installed. It was interesting to see their guarantee! I like doing business with a company that puts their money where their mouth is. Their business is PREVENTION of strikes, not minimizing the damage that occurs when struck. It would be interesting to see what their claim history is.

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Designed for sailboats 25-45ft
Height 14"
Width 3"
Weight 1.5 lbs
$ 285.84
Lightning Prevention Systems warrants your product or products to be free of defects in workmanship and materials for a period of 7 years from date of purchase. Lightning Prevention Systems also guarantees that, when properly installed, your boat will not experience a direct hit by lightning. This guarantee will be in effect for a period of 5 years from the date of purchase. Should your boat ever be struck, Lightning Prevention Systems will pay up to one thousand dollars of your insurance deductible for the claim submitted for losses or damage caused by that direct strike to your boat. Lightning Prevention Systems will pay five hundred dollars for losses or damage caused by a direct strike of your boat is uninsured. This guarantee is non-transferable and covers units remaining in their original installation location and boat.
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Our experience says perhaps you CAN prevent strikes.
You need:
- an effective dissipator (or several dissipators) at the masthead,
- a very straight high conductivity path to the water

This installation has worked very well for us. We've been spared hits while very near to us, boats with much shorter rigs were hit, usually on the VHF antenna.

I would have posted the links and photo but I just found out until I've posted 10 posts, I'm prohibited from including links or photos.