Chuck wrote: - >Are there any records of paddlers struck by lightening and >We are not even paddling aluminum watercraft. >Our paddles are usually wood or fiberglass. G'Day Chuck, If there are no such records then two of us had a fair chance of making one yesterday if we hadn't got off the water. At the storms peak, which lasted half an hour in our location, there were about 5 strikes a minute, with no time between some of the flashes and thunder that I could measure. This was a hell of a storm - with hail larger than golf balls in some places - lot of damage. I was using a carbon fibre paddle. Kayaks are insulators coated with a conductor, water. Not only that but humans are good conductor being mainly composed of salty water. And of course there are carbon fibre paddles! Michael Daly recently measured one as having a resistance of roughly 40 Ohms and Dave Kruger also gave a compelling description of the behaviour of materials in a lightning strike (Paddlewise Digest 2096). Some times a calculated risk degenerates into a "drunkards walk" gamble. All the best, PeterO *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Sun Oct 26 2003 - 00:23:50 PDT
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:31:10 PDT