Yikes, what a story
I remember reading somewhere that a good safety precaution for lightning is to attach a copper wire to one of the spreaders, long enough to where it will hang down into the water. I haven't done this myself; seems too cumbersome and not very nice looking. I mentioned this to an engineer friend of mine who often goes sailing with me and his response was that you couldn't hang a thick enough wire to make much of a difference if the mast took a direct lightning strike.
Im not sure if Merrick White is still around but back in 2002 his 01 26X took a hit on the mast and after the insurance co. investigated the lightning strike his dealer came up with a repair cost of $8,400 and the insurance co. had it repaired instead of totaling it. If I remember correctly from his posts on the old board there was quite a bit of waterline damage. He had it fixed and was around on this board when Heath first switched over to the new format.
