Lighting strike on HB

[mann4ducks]

need a little help/advise
looks like our hB was hit by lighting strike. around 3or 4th wk august in the BF 300 series field
the top 2 feet of our marine band antenna was blow apart in shreds
marine radio wirings melted , solar controller taken out, inverter taken out, both outboard rectifiers/regulators taken out, XM radio gone
seems like all that we can find at this time but I haven't been there myself yet to go over other systems.
fridge seems good, water systems working, all lighting good no apparent issues at water line with alum. pontoons we have already replaced solar charge controller and our array is producing fine, (maybe some residual charge added to them ) solar batt. bank seems to be holding charge but cannot fully test under load until we replace inverter.
any suggestions on other things to test from anyone who has had this happen either at LP or other places
hey maybe this will give us a reset on the mussel growth for awhile
thanks
Shady Lady

 

[Pegasus]

Shady Lady, my boat was hit by lighting a few years ago while in slip at APM. The first 'sign' was the VHF antenna shredded like yours was (besides hearing later from people who actually saw the strike that thought the entire boat was going to catch fire and blow up when the lightning hit).

In my case, nearly every 12v and 120v item in my boat was fried. All the items you mentioned, plus refrigerator was intermittent (mostly not working), 12v charger, water pumps, ice maker, stereo and vhf radios, satellite tv antenna (auto) and controller, DirecTV satellite tv boxes, 12v fans, blowers, fish finder/chart plotter, battery charge controllers, fuel flow meters. In all $25,000 worth of electronic stuff.

My insurance company, Boat U.S., had a marine surveyor arrive within 2 days of me reporting the damage - one of the top guys in the country that flys all over the world doing surveys of damage to boats from lightning - he just happened to live in Cedar City. He was a very nice guy, even though for the first hour or so he was there I could tell he was still trying to acertain whether I was telling him the truth or not - i.e. I think he thought I was I trying to defraud the insurance company. But after an hour or so, he seemed to have found enough proof that lighting caused the damage and not me that he lightened up a bit. But he did still require me to send many of the high dollar electronics (i.e. inverter, radios) to a company to have them tested and confirm lightning was the culprit at their expense.

The two strangest things that he found was that nothing at all happened to the genset; and we found no place that the lightning left the hull through the bottom (hauled out to check the bottom) - he thought it would have likely had a hole in the bottom based upon the damage. The theory was that my old boats grounding system was so good that the lightning energy dispersed through all the properly gounded through hulls and didn't just exit through one through hull.

My advice to you is to check EVERYTHING that has power going to it - 12v or 120v, as the surveyor also told me that many items work after lighting, but fail within a year - my insurance covered additional items that went out over the next year, but nothing did as everything got fried right of the bat except the refer - and that isn't something you can have work intermittently, so it was replaced immediately.

In the end, I was very impressed with Boat U.S. Insurance (this was right before they were sold to Geico) - I still use them today and they did not raise my rates (but they lowered the insurable value of my boat). I don't know if they would be so good now under Geico ownership - I hope so.

Let me know if there are any specific questions I can answer for you. I would be surprised if what you've found are the only items that were fried, but it really depends upon your grounding system as that is how the voltage would travel throughout the boat. BTW-it took me 6-9 months to get everything repaired/replaced.

 

[mann4ducks]

Pegasus
thanks you very much for the reply with your experience. It will help us out greatly dealing with the insurance. I would like to speak to you directly if possible on this. If you have the time call me and I can go over your experience in greater detail, I started a message in the
"conversation" menu of blog . I am not sure with you being on the page side of the lake if your access to mechanics is better than the BF area. your 6 to 9 month time frame could turn into over a year up here in our experience with the available services. We typ. handle all service on our boat ourselves.

 

[PowellBride]

Pegasus
I am not sure with you being on the page side of the lake if your access to mechanics is better than the BF area. your 6 to 9 month time frame could turn into over a year up here in our experience with the available services. We typ. handle all service on our boat ourselves.

mann4ducks - we are north enders and when we need significant work done we take the boat to Page. We've been working with LP Marine and couldn't be happier. In fact our boat is being picked up at the Wahweap marina today by them. The vendors in Page are near civilization and are able to hire and maintain year-round employees, which generally means you are able to get a higher level of expertise. With that much damage, I'd do everything I could to get it to the south end.

In recent years LP Marine has replaced significant portions of our hull that had rusting issue, and replace the whole roof. Along with some misc mechanical issues. This year we are focusing on an overhaul of the outdrives and engines with them.