Added lightning protection

(pictures will be added when I have time to sit down for more than a minute)

Maybe I should say “replaced”, but I don’t consider 30 year-old stiff corroded 14 gauge wired snaked from the chainplates all through the overhead of the boat before going down to the keel bolt any form of lightning protection.  The cables need to be substantial–I used 4 gauge–and more importantly they need to run as straight as possible down to the keel bolt.  The idea is to protect the lightning from travelling down the shroud and then jumping from chainplate straight to the mast–which would happen to be right through the center of the boat where you could be standing at the time.  So each chainplate got its own 4 gauge wire, and the three wires on each side join up behind the settees (a bolt holds the terminals together), then one wire goes down alongside the watertanks, underneath the settees, on each side, to a keel bolt.

There are four chainplates on each side, but the aft lower and the intermediate backstays are bolted together on opposite sides of the bulkhead (they serve as each other’s backing plate) and so required only one cable on each side.

I snaked another 4 gauge cable from the backstay down to a keel bolt, but I haven’t yet done the forestay.  That will be more problematic since it needs to go underneth the holding tank, which has poured expandable foam all around it from what I can see.