Grab this from the Starboard Forum and thought it proposed an
interesting theory on lightning protection. I'm sure that I woudn't
want to test this theory. I wanted to put this before the brain
trust to see what everybody thinks....

Lighing strikes on windsurfers is not very common - but seems that
the case where lighting went down through the mast and jumped
through the board to the water is the signiture of a lighting strike
on a windsurfer. The kit is pretty much destroyed but about the
worst injury is sometimes burns on the feet and hands.

Lighting protoction is generally providiing a substantial straight
path to ground for the lighting. You cant prevent the lighting
strike so the approach is channeling the main energy through one
controlled path so that nearby "stuff" (like a body or electronics)
does not receive much energy.

So maybe a windsufer inherently has some level of lighting safety
built in. It has a long and straight high conductance path (the
mast) which is much more likeky to receive the strike than the
nearby human and the bottom end is "fairly" close to where you would
like to dump the energy (the water). Grounding from the mast to the
underside of the board as someone suggested on the other board might
help but the actual "data" would seem to show that the lighting
generally jumps through the board with no problem..

Of course, not implyiing at all the windsurfing in lighting is safe
but its interesting that in most cases (????) where a windsurfer
gets hit by lighting, it goes down through the mast and jumps
through the board and the sailer only gets relively minor injuries