We arrived at the shipyard on Monday, July 30th. The first week Por Dos was hauled to check the structural integrity of her hull, the engine and sail drives. Everything looked OK so, with her bottom cleaned and painted, she went back on the water on Friday, Aug 4th.

We had the rig inspected by Rigging Solutions. Other than the vaporized VHF antenna and the blackened masthead tricolor/anchor light, there were no signs of the strike and no structural issues with the rigging.

During the same week we continued to check all the systems that were malfunctioning or not functioning at all. The list was long: all electronics for navigation including the expensive chart plotter, the Automatic Identification System (AIS), the inside VHF radio, the Single Side Band/Ham radio, the stereo, part of the electric panel (including all the screens were you can see the status of batteries and other systems), the inverter control panel, the regulators and charge controllers for the engine alternators, most of the navigation lights, the water-maker controller (until we have a replacement we do not know if the water-maker itself is OK or not), the diesel and water tank sensors, and, of course, both the autopilot and backup autopilot.

Fortunately, few things had survived including Alec and Roan’s critical systems: the TV screen, DVD player and the WiFi. Everything in the stern tower (radar, outside VHF radio, Navtex, WiFi antenna), the house batteries and the windlass that drives the anchor were also OK. The fridge and stove suffered no damage. Interestingly, everything that was not wired, Mark and the boys’ laptops, my iPad and the printer were all OK; our Mac/PC, which was wired, got fried.

Our hope is to have everything replaced in the next couple of weeks. The good news is that we might be able to do some local sailing/cruising while we wait for the electronic replacements.

On a side note about lighting strikes and boats, Mark found some statistics published by a boating insurance company. It seems that 1% of monohulls and 2% of catamarans get hit every year. The statistics are higher in Florida. A boat in Florida had been hit five times (I would take that as I sign to either change boats or find a different hobby). The record goes to a sailboat that got hit twice in the same storm. It is amazing how little do we know about lighting strike and prevention. According to Mark (my walking Wikipedia ☺), there is little to be done to prevent strikes; his theory, based on his reading on the topic, is that the strike is going into an area and it hits the easiest thing on that area. This would explain why catamarans have double the probability of get hit (they occupy a bigger area) or why it is not always the tallest mast that gets hit. Here at the yard, we have already met two boats, one catamaran and one monohull that had also been struck within the last 12 months. I am struggling with not being able to do something to prevent it or at least minimize the damage to electronics. We now plan to at least have a backup autopilot wrapped up in foil and stored somewhere uninstalled (seeing that our installed and ready to go backup autopilot got fried at the same time with the main one).