Oh boy are YOU ever confident!
Heh guys, real life story here.
Three years ago, August. Sitting out in the canyon overnight swordfishing. Roughly 80nm offshore.
On the radar this nasty black blob starts approaching, and there's visible fire coming from it. Not good. Its 0-dark-30, so there's no point in pulling up and getting underway, really. There's a commercial shrimp boat working about 3-4nm off our port bow.
We rig for weather, get the lines in, and figure we're going to get wet. Big deal - we're out fishing, right? The storm doesn't look that bad - just one of those pop-up overnight boomers that happen almost every day in the summer.
Ok, so we're sitting in the cabin as the rain is falling, and suddenly there's a big white flash off the port bow, followed a few seconds later by a nasty-loud thunderclap.
The shrimp boat appears to be GONE.
Oh oh. I get up on the bridge and, tinkering with the clutter and gain, manage to see that the target is still there. Ok. But he's dark. VERY dark. The VHF elicits no response.
We crank up and saunter on over; something bad has obviously happened and well, I don't care for shrimpers, but I'm not going to leave a half-dozen guys or more out here to drift (or worse, float with all the shark food that'd end up in the water if they sank!)
We get to them and the boat is STILL dark. There are a few handheld flashlights and one handheld spot in operation. Now within short range I can raise them on a handheld VHF which they apparently had.
What happened? They were hit by lightning on their rigging. The bolt went into their main electrical panels and turned them into copper slush. They have zero electrical power and are uncertain if they will be able to recover any of it at this point.
However, they do have propulsion, because their mechanical main engine was running at the time, and it still is, of course. Pre-dawn light is only an hour or so away, and they decline assistance, stating that they're not taking water, have propulsion and have a working compass - they'll get home. They had a position fix before the event, so they know what bearing to steer to get back to their inlet, more or less.
Now what do you think would have been the situation had that main engine been one that required some sort of electronics (of any sort!) to run? Gas engine? Ok, is it old-style points or does it have an electronic module in it? Heh, guess what - all those electronics are slag after something like this happens!
Now, you say that's a 1 in a million eh?
I had a half-system DC failure offshore a number of years ago on Gigabite. It was caused by a failed alternator (this was prior to my installing the combiner!) on one side. Had that engine been electronic, it would have shut down. As it was, it was a minor inconvenience. Could I have fixed it offshore if I had to? Maybe (if I had the parts to fix the bad diode bridge in the alternator) but it most certainly was nicer to wait until the engine room was cool and I was able to work on it without burning the bejeezus out of my fingers and roasting in the 130F temps in the engine room besides!
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