SPANGLE LIGHNING

After 3 thunderstorms, one outside Ostend and two at the Veerse Meer, we decided to take the inside route home instead of going from Stellendam straight to Ijmuiden.

After a nice day and evening on anchor at the Kagerplassen, we were woken up at about 5 o clock in the morning by a big "bang", immediately followed by lightning. We got out of bed to have a look around because, with the thunderstorm, the wind had picked up very strongly. When I looked outside there was a very bright flash again - I thought just at the stern of the boat.

Neither of us could see for a few seconds because of the bright light. I looked again at te outside of the boat to see if everything was OK ....

.... then we heard the refrigerator running on high power (we have an Isotherm refrigerator and it only runs at high power when the engine is running or when we have shore-power). I had a look at the volt indicator and it shows about 15 volts, we decided to switch off the refrigerator but it would not stop so we turned off the main battery switch.

After all this we looked again at the weather and the children , two boys 12 and 7 years old. The youngest one was very afraid.

After half an hour everything became calm again. We switched on the battery's again and immediately the GPS started 'blipping'. We checked it and it was out of order, so we started to examine all the electronics - VHF, Navtex, depth-sounder, stereo, portable-radio , windset, refrigerator, heating (Webasto-diesel) and the auto-pilot. Only the heating and the cooling were still working and all the rest was gone and, later that day, as we sailed the last few miles home, we discovered that the log was gone too!

The only thing what could be repaired was our nearly 30 years old Sailor VHF it needed only a new 12 volt supply because the old one was complete burned out.

So for the first time in several years, the boat is on dry land for the whole winter and we craned the mast out for checking. The Vhf aerial, which is from GRF, was ruined . The only damage we found on the boat was a small welding pitt at the stainless steel anchor-bow fitting.

Hope this doesn't happen to many other Contessa owners!!