Yeah Im going to go ahead and agree here y ou just want to stay away from lighting with your boat. My airplane got hit by lightning once blew out all the ciruct breakers and left two black spots where it went into the fuselauge and back out the forward cowling. Dident quite put holes through the plane but im t hinking it could have and I was just damn lucky. But I was in teh air I cant imagine sitting in the middle of the lake with a metal pole 25 ft in the air and me at the bottom of it sitting in the water. My advice you think your going to get into a thunder storm just dont go sailing, after all you want to live to sail another day. Ive been hit once in the airplane scared the hell out of me. So a word to the wise dont sail your cat in a thunderstorm no matter how great the wind.
Lee