Gaff rig, woodmast, synthetic shrouds and lightning protection
 

Hi,

After reading all the posts on this forum I am fairly certain we will be using synthetic standing rigging.

We will have a gaff rig, and I'm wondering if anybody has any previous experience on providing lightning protection for a rig with a wood mast and synthetic shrouds.

I'm going to be laminating up our spars next month and at the moment planning to run a large conductor internally and bond it to underwater metal. I am somewhat concerned about heating of this conductor and it will be over sized from the nominal NFPA/AYBC 4awg guidance.

Thoughts ? Comments ? Hoping somebody else has thought about this also.

Cheers,
Mark

Or not to lightning rod...
 

This topic has been flogged to death on other forums without a conclusive answer--it seems we still know less about lightning than we'd like. I fall into the camp of: "why offer lightning a path to ground?" and thus my aluminum mast is not grounded to anything--it just ends at it's tabernacle on deck. The synthetic shrouds also don't offer a path, and since they're non-absorbent, there would only be surface water to act as a conductor.
So far we haven't been struck, but I attribute that more to Providence than to having done the right thing. Since I'm still not sure what the right thing is.

Good luck.
Ben