One of the most dreaded things that sailors fear is a lightning strike. Today, it happened to several boats and we were one of them. Fortunately we got off with only 1 problem (we hope). We were out during the storm and when we got back, our neighbor told us that they had been hit by lightning. All their instruments were out. The boat across from them was also hit, so bad that their antenna fell off the top of their mast. Another boat diagonally across from us had his HF radio out. So we rushed back on board to check all our instruments. Everything seemed fine except that our EchoPilot (our depth transducer) was not reading the depth. We have a spare and we put that in and it read fine. So now our 7-month old depth transducer is dead. But in a way, we should be happy that all our other instruments are fine and that we have a spare depth transducer.
Why and how did the depth transducer get hit when all the others didn't? We reckon it might either be a power surge or perhaps the lightning found its way from under the boat, where the transducer is located.
At the end of day, we really have to be thankful that no major damage was caused to prevent our departure.
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