Rio Dulce Boats

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Cruiser Tips

Diesel Maintenance • Lock your dinghy!! • Running the bar • Lightning

CASEY BROOKS
Diesel maintenance for cruising sailors

I sailed "Retriever" for five years without an engine. We sailed all over Puget Sound, the San Juan Islands and up into Canada, drifting or anchoring when there was no wind, rowing at times with a pair of sixteen foot lifeboat oars, playing the currents, sailing in zephyrs with a huge, old two-ounce drifter. It was a challenge and it was fun.

We used to sail in and out of the marina in Port Townsend for Wednesday evening and Saturday racing. Everyone was nice, as they nervously rigged fenders when they saw us coming. I sailed down to San Francisco and under the Golden Gate Bridge because I always wanted to do it, and then sailed right back out - too cold and too expensive.

I sailed up and down the coast of Mexico. I wasn't shy about accepting a tow; it's a great way to meet people. Finally, becalmed in the Gulf of Panama for three days and nights, surrounded by ships heading for the Canal, and rolling from rail to rail, I vowed to get an engine.

Several years later, after many more engineless adventures, I was working in American Samoa and ordered a brand new three-cylinder Yanmar. I built the engine beds, drip pan, and engine room enclosure. Then I drilled the hole for the shaft tube about 80% of the way through from the inside. We hoisted the engine aboard and, there being no haulout in Pago Pago, I sailed to Fiji to complete the instillation. That was in 1986, and the "Old Yammering" is still going, although it is well overdue for an overhaul.

I really like my engine. It has been hard working, non-complaining and faithful. So has my boat, "Retriever," now that I think about it. I have let them down at times - for example, I wrecked the boat on a reef in New Guinea and drowned "Old Yammering" in the process. It has been a long, tough career for that engine, with hit-or-miss maintenance and jury rigged repairs.

Now here is how you should take care of your engine. First off, if you do not have the service manual and parts manual, then you should get them. Yanmar's manuals are excellent, Westerbeke's are C-minus, and most others are good to very good. I keep a maintenance log right inside my service manual.

Let's talk lubrication first. Change the engine oil about every 100 hours. Read what your manual says and try to do it. People ask, "why so often?" Because large amounts of carbon are deposited in the oil which really hurts it's lubricating ability. The carbon also blocks heat transfer and affects the cooling function of the oil. There is also a buildup of sulfuric acid which can damage the bearings. Use good oil (I like Delco 400) and use quality filters. I have broken both of these rules and it is hard to know how much damage was done. Once, in the Solomon Islands, a very windless place, I used five gallons of coconut oil topping up a significant engine oil leak until I could get to an island where I could fix the leak and buy engine oil. The boat smelled great, by the way.

Check your transmission fluid level once in a while. Sniff it for any burned or sour smell, and change it on schedule - my Yanmar manual says every 300 hours.

The cooling system: Here in the tropics the water is warm, which is a disadvantage in the battle to keep the engine from overheating. Diesel engines operate under a piston compression of 350 to 550 pounds per square inch. If your average bear is standing tip-toe on a square inch of your piston ….. well, I digress, but it is a lot of compression, four times that of a gasoline engine. This high compression puts great strain on the engine and creates a lot of heat. It is absolutely crucial to have a well functioning cooling system.

Gasoline engines can suffer from numerous overheating episodes without ruining the engine. Not so with diesels. Overheating can occur rapidly and can do serious damage. Inspect your hoses. I put on my glasses and an LED headlamp for this job. I look at each hose and its hose clamps. Hoses get old – they crack, they split and they blow off. The clamps dig in and cut the hose. The clamps rust, corrode and break. Replace those old clamps and pay the extra money for the best. Get heavy duty, 316 stainless steel clamps by ABA. Spend six dollars a clamp instead of two dollars. It's money well spent.

Clean the cooling system. Drain out the old coolant, read the instructions and refill with a properly mixed solution of coolant or anti-rust agent and water. Don't just guess.

There are a number of gaskets in the cooling system that can fail. If your engine is over ten years old you might consider ordering these and having them on hand. Definitely have an entire spare raw water pump aboard. Also have impellors and all the little parts to rebuild this pump. When it goes, change out the old pump with this spare, and then later in a quiet anchorage rebuild the original pump, which becomes your spare. The freshwater pump has a longer life. Mine failed after about fifteen years. Also have aboard a spare filler cap and a thermostat.

When in doubt, clean everything. This is the first principle of maintenance. Clean the raw water thru hull at each haulout and periodically by diving down with your mask and fins. Clean the raw water filter. Clean the air filter. Clean all the gunk off your alternator. Take off every wire and clean and polish the terminals. Especially take off the big black battery cable that grounds to the bolt on your engine.

Sand off all the corrosion on the ring terminal and polish to a gleaming finish with metal polish. Now degrease, scrape, treat with Ospho (phosphoric acid) and wire brush the bolt and the area on the engine where the cable attaches. You want clean metal to metal contact here. This perks up your whole electrical system. It also helps you lose weight and look younger. Try it, you'll like it.

Fuel system: Problems with the fuel system generally do not cause engine damage, but they can affect engine performance and be very annoying. In the third world I only take on diesel fuel in jerry jugs. Then I can leisurely pour it into my tanks through a filter. I use a three stage "Baja" filter. Still, water and dirt get into one's tank. One way water gets in is through a faulty O-ring seal at the deck filler cap. Another way is through a tank vent. Then there is condensation … anyway, water happens. Every six months or so I pour in some anti-microbe "Biobor" or its equivalent. This kills bacterial blooms at the water/diesel interface. Of course, change your filters periodically. Take your Racor primary filter apart so you can clean the whole thing.

I have installed an outboard motor type squeeze bulb in the fuel line before the Racor primary. This speeds up filling the filter after an element change and pushes air bubbles out when bleeding the system. On my Yanmar 3HM35 there is no need to bleed the various points mentioned in the manual. I simply crack open the nut at the base of the fuel injection pump and squeeze the primer bulb until all the air bubbles escape. Using the little thumb operated lever on the feed pump is for people with masochistic tendencies, athletic thumbs, or lots of time on their hands.         What about an electric fuel pump to bleed the system? I prefer the relatively cheap, simple, reliable, non-electric squeeze bulb. Here's a little quiz:

Most problems in life are caused by?

a)     Girlfriends
b)     High cholesterol
c)      Politicians
d)     Electrical things on boats

If you answered "d" you're right. One reason that diesels are so reliable is because they don't have a lot of electrical stuff on them.

The exhaust system does not need much maintenance. The anti-siphon valve needs periodic attention. Salt crystals can jam it in the open position, spraying water all over the engine room. Long ago I removed the valve from the top of the loop and put a hose over the stem. This hose goes through the cockpit side and into a cockpit drain.

This is a nice arrangement. I can easily pull the hose out of the drain to check if I have cooling water, which saves having to lean over the stern. Also, I can feel the temperature if my gauge/alarm is not working. Lastly, I have a ready supply of hot water for washing dishes, clothes, cleaning fish blood, etc. right there in my cockpit.

Every four years or so, if your diesel is acting sluggish on acceleration, unbolt the exhaust elbow and clean out all the accumulated carbon and rust. You will be amazed at how much is in there. Prime, paint and bolt everything back on. Remember to always grease each bolt you are replacing. This will make it a lot easier to remove next time. Nevr-Seize is good, as is lanolin. I like to wire brush the threads clean first.

Diesel engines are pretty reliable. Use your service manual as a guideline for how often to change the oil, etc. You don't have to be perfect, but you should try. You should run your engine at least every seven days. Allow the engine to warm up, then run it at about 1500 RPM for about five minutes and shut it down. Avoid prolonged idling. If you need to charge your batteries but don't want to go anywhere, try putting it in gear and pulling on your docklines.

Take it easy, you don't want to pull the dock over.

Take care, and I hope to see you on the Rio.

Lock your dinghy!!

Everywhere you go people want to steal your outboard.

Here on the Rio Dulce we have a real problem with this.

Some places are worse; Venezuela is legendary. When I was there on “Retriever” back in 1999, a yacht in the same anchorage had their inflatable with outboard stolen one night.

This particular dinghy was raised high on the boat’s stern in davits and was locked with half inch stainless steel chain. The next morning the chain was dangling in the water and the dinghy and outboard were gone. The “weak link” was the cheaply made in China padlock, which had been cleanly cut with bolt cutters. The shackle clearly said “hardened.” Yeah, sure.

Go back to the first sentence.

People want to steal your outboard. They don’t necessarily want to steal your dinghy. The modus operandi of the thieves is to steal the dinghy quietly. Then they can take it to a remote place or a convenient hideout where they have plenty of time to extract the outboard motor: hacksaws, grinders, drills, chainsaws, cutting torches, tactical nuclear weapons, whatever it takes.

So the key point is to lock your dinghy to the big boat every night. Strong places can be found on any boat: cleats, pad eyes, stanchions, enclosed bulwark chocks and davits. The problem is finding a strong point in the average dinghy. If it is an inflatable there are usually a couple of U-bolts through the transom, but these can be cut with quality bolt cutters. They can also be hacksawed (slower, noisier) These U-bolts can also be unbolted, of course.

On my launch “Jaguar” the nuts of the U-bolts have been fiberglassed over to prevent this. In my opinion the impregnable point should be where the motor attaches to the dinghy. See the photo of my 15 HP attached to my launch. (Note the custom jaguar paint job by Jennifer. She’d probably be willing to paint your outboard too. Talk with her at Mario’s swap meet.)

First, there is an aluminum plate that beefs up and protects the transom from the outboard’s bracket. Through this bracket there are two 5/16” stainless steel bolts that go through holes in the Yamaha’s bracket. Good, the outboard is bolted on.

Next, the clamp screws are tightened down evenly, and adjusted so that they are both turned inward and the holes in the handles line up. Now a quality padlock goes through the holes in the two handles and the eye of the stainless steel cable. The cable in the photo is 3/16” 1x19. Another good choice is a vinyl coated lifeline wire, the largest of which is ¼” diameter 7x7 wire and measures about 3/8”including the vinyl jacket. Get a piece at least 10 feet long and nicropress an eye (with thimble liners) in each end. One eye locks to the motor and the other eye locks to the yacht.

In the photo you see a “Corbin” SS padlock with a hardened 5/16” shackle. In our tests neither the cheap bolt cutters (Taiwan, 24” with black handles) or the expensive one (Draper, high tensile 30” with red handles) could cut this.

Likewise, neither bolt cutters could cut the lifeline wire. They merely crush the wire and cannot get through.

However, proper cable cutters (red handles- Arm wr10: 24” red handles, far left in the photo) easily cut this cable. These cable cutters belong to Steve on “Witch of Endor.” That’s Steve at the workbench gleefully cutting things. These cutters are very hard to obtain and we hope the “ladrones” don’t have them.

So the “weak link” at the motor is the light aluminum clamp handles. These can be easily broken with a hammer or a machete. This happened to me once in Borneo, but the noise woke me up and I was able to foil the robbery. Once the handles are broken, the cable with lock intact will fetch up on the eye built into the transom clamp pad – that is if you have one and have thought to thread the cable through it. This eye is also aluminum and can be easily cut or broken, but more time and more noise is needed.

The handles can also be protected by a tube or bar lock. (See photo) on the table top. I do not particularly like these. First off, there is not enough room to get the eye of the cable locked inside. Secondly, these are merely painted steel, which rusts badly, and the lock (Master) needs oiling and cleaning frequently. Many a boater has had to employ his or her safecracking skills when the frozen lock refuses to open.

I see that West Marine has a new version of the bar lock out in all stainless steel. Called a “high security outboard lock,” it sells for $99.99. It’s worth checking out. Greg and Barbara on “C Toy” showed me an elegant lock of this type, all stainless, made in Holland, which sells for about $70.

Now, maybe this is overkill, but in addition to the cable at the motor, I lock up my launch at the bow with a chain. In the photo you see me attacking this chain with the bolt cutters. The Taiwanese black handles, probably equal to what you can buy at the hardware store here in Guatemala, couldn’t cut it, leaving only little beaver teeth marks.

The bigger, 30” Drapers cut the chain, but only with full body weight and bracing one handle on the hard surface of the launch. With an inflatable and using only arm strength – I don’t think so. This chain is 3/8” proof coil. High test would be even better. However, one has to cut the chain twice to free the link. Again, twice the time and noise.

See the photo with the finger pointing to the first cut. This chain should be padlocked to the dinghy and the yacht with quality padlocks. The round shaped “Diskus” padlock is excellent, as is the “Abus” # 89511. These locks have high shoulders and no room to let bolt cutters or hacksaws get at the shackle. Expect to pay at least $50 US for a good padlock.

On the big boat end, loop the chain through several places if you can. I go around two shrouds and a lifeline stanchion.Don’t use cheap Chinese made locks.

Using the black handled 24” bolt cutters, we chomped easily through a brass “Abus” lock with a quarter inch shackle. Then we tried a “Globe” lock with a 3/8” shackle marked “hardened.”

The cheap bolt cutters couldn’t cut it, but the 30” Drapers could.

Examine your own setup and find the “weak link.” Remember, it’s not good enough to have the motor secured to the dinghy. You have to secure the dinghy to the mother ship as well. Get serious. My 15 HP Yamaha costs $2000, and the average inflatable costs $3000. Spend some time on this, and spend some money on good cable, chain, and padlocks.

Running the bar

Fishing Boats Crossing The Bar At Sunrise

For those of you who have not crossed the bar yet I want to summarize up front: DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT.
The normal depth of the sandy bar is five and a half feet. Many of you have a GPS with tide stations. Some of you might have the regular printed tide tables.
You can find the tables on the www.mayaparadise.com website. There was a photocopy on the wall in Raul’s (ServaMar) office in Livingston last time I was there

You want to cross an hour or even two before high tide. Check that you are on the right time, too. You want to err on the early side so you have time to fool around getting off before the tide falls.

When I crossed the first time, “Retriever” was very heavy drawing 6’8”. Since then a ton, literally, of tools and 25 years of cruising stuff has come off the boat and into my shop on the lower Golfete. Now she draws 6’6”, maybe 6’5”.

I have been over the bar six times now, with the lowest I have tried a plus 1.4’ I’ve encountered a number of river bars over the years: The Pacific Northwest, Ecuador, Malaysia, East Africa, and most memorable, Coff’s Harbor, Australia with roller coaster seas running.

The Rio Dulce is pretty easy. Here’s my strategy. Pick a reasonable tide. If this is your first crossing you want to do it in daylight.

Find the entrance buoy at approximately N 15degrees 50’ W 88 degrees 44.5’. When the light works it flashes green. Hang offshore of the buoy and get ready. Douse the sails but keep them ready.

Line up the distant canyon mouth and check that it is about 225 to 230 degrees on your compass. Set up your GPS “runway page” When all is ready for example, pull your dinghy painter up tight if you are towing.

Then get the boat up to full speed and go for it. This is about a 10-15 minute run. Have your crew watch the GPS and say GO RIGHT or GO LEFT. Don’t get all technical and expect to steer a perfect course.

There is often a side setting current here. Keep looking back at the buoy to see how this is affecting you and come back onto the line drawn between the buoy and the canyon. This is seat of the pants and eyeball navigation. The GPS is just there to make you feel good.

If you start to bump, don’t back off the throttle, keep the momentum you have, this muddy/sandy bar can’t hurt you. I like an afternoon tide, because usually an onshore wind is blowing, say ten to fifteen knots.

This sounds scary, but in reality it is very helpful for a boat like mine. “Retriever” has a very old and tired 3 cylinder diesel. Add to the equation a narrow two blade prop and I’m lucky to get the boat up 5.7 knots.

Now with the wind and waves helping, “Retriever” bumps over the bar instead of sticking. This bumping starts about a hundred meters in from the entrance buoy and continues until about the point the hotel sits on.

By the way don’t angle into the anchorage off the town dock until you are about at right angle to it. “Retriever” has a full keel with external lead ballast shaped like a V. Without the wind waves she happily wedges herself into the sand and sticks there with a dumb dog look on her face.

If this happens to you, don’t panic, the boat is not in dire straits. The bottom is soft, there are no rocks, and you’re not going to sink. Are you?

Put on the coffee pot. If you’re English, tea. If you are an old Rio hand, crack open a beer. Now CALMLY, unfurl the genoa if there is wind. Your strategy is to heel the boat. Now using the engine try going back and forth.

Advanced students can let the boom out as far as it goes and get your crew to climb out there. Bribe with beer if necessary. If all you have for crew is Jake or Fluffy, try hoisting the dinghy from the end of the boom. Try bucketing water into the dinghy for extra weight...

Now by this time the sailboat that might be anchored off Livingston has seen you or heard your calm call on the VHF (try 68 in addition to 16). At any rate, a local lancha will come out. The natives are friendly.

They want to, of course, make some money pulling you off. If you just can’t get off yourself, start negotiating. I think something around $30 or $40 is reasonable. The 100 Quetzal note is worth about $13 US. If you don’t speak much Spanish try holding up two twenty dollar bills and see if they agree. At any rate, be nice; give them each a coke and maybe some cookies.

If they don’t come down from a ridiculously high price, tell them “Gracias” for coming out, crack open another beer, after all you ARE technically in the Rio, and pretend to rig the hammock.

Just remember old tub of lard Spanish galleons got in here and so have 7’ draft yachts.

I just now turned on my GPS, November 12, 2007 clicking on the tide page for Rio Dulce Entrance; I see that the tides are asymmetrical at the moment. The first high is 9:30 am and is only a plus 1.3 feet. Europeans please switch from meters, and shellbacks please switch from fathoms, so that we are all talking feet here.

The second high is a really good one, topping out at a whopping 2.0’ at 8:00pm. I would go on this one. Let’s say I’m up the Rio and want to go out. I would go down to Livingston in the afternoon and check out. Then around sunset I would head out with the tide at about 1.6 and rising.

So let’s say you’ve made it over. Anchor off the town dock, hoist the yellow Q flag and wait for the authorities to come out. Raul is your key guy here and makes checking in smooth and easy. Nobody hurries here; call Raul on 16 if no one has come.

If I’ve caught a fish, I like to have chunks ready in plastic bags for the officials. There will be four or five. Cookies and cokes are good here too, and Raul is very fond of Velveeta cheese. So to summarize, DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT.

Hope to see you on the Rio,
Casey

OVER THE BAR you'll see river scenes like this. Photo by Brian King, s/v Mustang

Lightning

Benjamin Franklin was a genius. He was a Renaissance man, interested in everything. He could cook, he could dance, and he could bow and kiss the hand of a beautiful woman. He traveled, read everything, and studied science, nature, politics, music, history. His curiosity knew no bounds.

He invented things. My favorite is a spring loaded bed. Not a spring mattress – the bed itself had a coiled spring under the headboard, and when the hand of the clock struck, say, 5:00 AM, a latch would release the spring, flinging the occupant out like a catapult. Ah, so much to do … so little time.

Ben was always up to something. During lightning storms he would fly a kite with a metal key attached by a copper wire. He wanted to see if this new invention, electricity, was the same as this natural thing, lightning. He found out that yes, it basically is. Franklin made up a lot of the words we still use today: negative, positive, conductor, battery, ground, and electrician. Much later men with names like Ohm, Ampere, and Watt added to the lexicon.

Now let me set the scene. We have this beautiful natural wonder called the Rio Dulce. This is a freshwater river and lake system that goes way up into Guatemala by way of an entrance from the Caribbean Sea. A bunch of cruising sailboats, and some powerboats too, have found their way up here. Right now, during hurricane season, the dozen marinas are pretty much full, and there are more boats anchored out. The weather is tropical year round. The hills and mountains are green. The water is warm and swimmable.

It rains a lot. Sometimes it rains more than a lot. The words deluge, tropical downpour, and Noah’s Ark come to mind. Sometimes we have these lightning storms that are so intense it is almost unbelievable. These happen almost exclusively at night. In the morning you wake as if from a dream. The storm has passed and everything is calm and peaceful. Birds are chirping.

My Guatemalan “guardian” and his boys come over and we work on boats. At coffee break no mention is made of the fierce lightning and thunder of the night before. This is totally routine. I imagine they think this happens everywhere. Once in awhile Santos will tell me about a big tree that has been killed by lightning. We pass the word to our favorite tree cutter and he comes with his chainsaw and cuts it down and into lumber. Living trees are not to be cut, but dead trees are literally a gift from heaven.

Every season a number of sailboats get struck by lightning in the Rio. Not too long ago a catamaran named “Tandem” got hit. The couple aboard were unharmed except for the ringing in their ears from the gigantic thunderclap. “Second Wind,” anchored near them, saw the lightning bolt strike the top of “Tandem’s” mast. A cloud of smoke the size of the boat formed above the mast and slowly drifted off downwind. “Tandem” hauled the next day at Ram Marine. Peppering the two hulls were about 80 “exit wounds” at and below the waterline. These were about the size of buckshot from a shotgun. What was really interesting were the scorched patterns radiating outward from the holes. Each of these “sunburst” patterns were similar, yet each was slightly different in the way that fingerprints or snowflakes are similar but unique That’s nature for you, that’s lightning: unpredictable, amazing, uncontrollable, beautiful, destructive.

The catamaran, “Island Time,” was hit recently. An examination of the hull with the boat hauled out of the water showed no apparent hull damage. However, the boat’s electronics and electrics were fried, and the 12 volt batteries have swollen lumps in the casings.

“Gitane,” down in Texan Bay, was hit. There were holes blown out of the fiberglass at the chainplates, and small holes above the waterline in both hulls. Again electrical and electronics were toasted. A side flash from the “Gitane” hit traveled two slips down and blew apart one of the hulls in a plywood trimaran. The compartment had gas cans and propane tanks in it. People fell off barstools up in the restaurant.

Here are a few statistics from the insurer, Boat US:Catamarans are hit twice as often as monohulls. If the boat is anchored out it is five times as likely to be hit as boats in marinas. In the US, thirteen people a year are killed by lightning on boats. The average lightning insurance claim is a whopping $20,000. As far as I know Boat US doesn’t cover boats that go cruising outside the US, so for ordinary, stay-at-home boats, Florida has the most claims, followed by the Chesapeake Bay area. Boats without masts are hit much less often, but still struck in significant numbers. Boats in freshwater are hit more often and sustain more damage than boats hit in salt water. Fresh water is a better conductor, I suppose. One boat in Sarasota, Florida, has been hit five times.

Now for a little science, sort of.

Positively charged ions are flowing skyward from the top of your mast during an electrical storm. Coming down from the clouds are the corresponding negative ions looking to “hook up.’ These are called “stepped leaders” – stepped because they are in a zigzag or stepped pattern which becomes visible when the ions connect and the lightning bolt flashes.

Zillions of volts are released. If you draw a semi-circle with a radius of about 200 feet, (65 meters) off the top of a mast, this is the boat’s sphere of influence. A stepped leader entering this semicircle will be drawn to the mast and hit it. The electrical current will go down the mast and the rigging wires to ground itself in the water. This happens in less than a second.

If there is a direct path to ground (water) the lightning might do less damage, but what really worries the insurance companies is something called “side flashes.” Let’s say we are on a charter catamaran, and the mast is stepped on the fiberglass deck.

There is no metal strap connecting the base of the aluminum mast to a metal keel or a ground plate. The lightning comes down the mast and flashes sideways, looking for metal chainplates or battery cables or engines or water tanks. It will happily pass through a human being, which is a good conductor of electricity.

Remember, humans are mostly water. So the hapless charterer is electrocuted. Say the dead guy is a 30 year old, high powered Wall Street lawyer, on vacation with his wife. Can you imagine the lawsuit? Loss of potential earnings over the course of his life, left behind 2.5 children who need to go to college, etc, etc. It makes that $20,000 claim for fried electronics look like small change.

Now, even if you have a strap from the base of your mast to a metal plate bolted through your hull like the ABYC recommends; even if you have a copper battery cables attached to the shrouds at the deck level and left dangling in the water; even if you’ve done your best, and maybe disconnected some radios and other electronics, and then your boat gets hit by lightning, a high percentage of your electronic and electrical equipment is going to be ruined. With lightning there is an electromagnetic pulse generated that can fry sensitive components, even if your boat is not hit. It doesn’t have to go through wires.

In the case of “Tandem,” anchored off Tortugal Marina, another neighboring cat, “Neos,” was not hit, but sustained significant electronics damage, and at least one boat in the marina had a toasted inverter. I suspect there will be more damaged electronics discovered when the absentee owners return to their boats for the cruising season.

So our hero, Ben Franklin, invented the lightning rod. The idea was that the lightning would hit the metal rod, go down a copper wire or strap to the ground rod, which was a copper rod driven into the ground. Thus the lightning would not strike the wood roof (in those days) which could set the building on fire.

My old boat shop, in Washington State, was a former apple packing barn. Up on the peak of the roof, on top of the ventilating cupola, was a wonderfully decorative, wrought iron “Franklin Rod.” This was hit at least twice while I was living there. The lightning rod was scorched and blackened, doing its job. That wooden barn has been there since 1910.

Now, on a sailboat, the mast is a lightning rod. Lightning is not going to come down and hit the deck or the bow pulpit. The mast will intercept it.

A few years back stainless steel “ion dissipaters” came on the market. Looking like a bottle brush, the theory was that when mounted on the top of a sailboat mast, the bristles would somehow dissipate or stop the upward flow of positive ions.

Well, like vegematic choppers and snake oil, this was a useless product that somehow caught the imagination of certain people. My friend Jack, in Guam, just had to have one of these things. Guam has lots of lightning. It is also a hurricane magnet, and has frequent earthquakes. People there get a little preoccupied with nature run amok. Jack talked lightning protection with anyone who’d listen. He explained the theory to us rather dim-witted unbelievers. He drew diagrams for us.

“Ah, right Jack, um, do you have any more beer?” we’d ask as we huddled below on his boat as lightning crashed all around. So his wife, Sandy, got him an “Ion dissipater” for him for Christmas. On Boxing Day we hauled him up in the boson’s chair.

After installing it he was exuberant. “Ha ha! Now my boat is protected, immune, untouchable! I am under the ‘cone of protection.’ You guys, however, are sitting ducks.” So the New Year’s Eve party was in full swing at the Mariana’s Yacht Club, when a thunderstorm moved in.

We all watched as (you guessed it) lightning hit Jacks’ mast. Jack dinghied out, and came back with smudges on his face and little burned bits of his “ion dissipater.” Did this do-dad make his boat more likely to get hit? We all thought so. The jokes went on for weeks, with people making “dissipaters” out of old TV antennas aluminum strips, and the kids’ slinky toys.

The University of Florida has a couple of lightning experts on their faculty. One has started a company to outfit new boats with lightning protection systems. These appear to be costly and over complicated. To refit an existing boat, the best thing to do is to connect the base of the mast with a battery-sized cable, down to a keel bolt or through bolt to a big plate on the outside of the hull.