‘I felt the lightning through my body’: Aussie sailor’s near-miss in America’s Cup electrical storm

Luna Rossa’s America’s Cup challenge was almost ended by a “potentially catastrophic” lightning strike over the race course on day five of the challenger series.

Racing had to be abandoned for the day after fork lightning dramatically struck the course 200 metres in front of the Italians as they led New Zealand down the final leg of their race.

Sailors on the New Zealand boat, around 700m further back, could be heard exclaiming “Holy s---” and “f--- me” as they turned tail and fled the course, swiftly lowering their sails and making for the cover of some tall superyachts.

Australian Jimmy Spithill, one of the co-helms aboard Luna Rossa, joked that he had actually felt relatively comfortable.

“I actually felt OK because I’ve been struck by lightning twice before,” he said. “They say when you’ve been hit before your odds of getting hit again are way smaller. So I reckon we were the safest boat in the fleet.

“It would have been catastrophic for the boat, though, no question. Both times I’ve been hit it destroyed the boat. The first time the boat actually caught fire because it was wooden and it hit the rig.

“I felt the lightning through my body. You get a shock but it’s like your eardrums get blown up.”

Lightning hitting boats is a fairly common occurrence and can have devastating consequences for the vessel and its crew.

Danish sailor Martin Kirketerp was hospitalised at SailGP Singapore last year after New Zealand’s F50 was struck by lightning. Kirketerp, who was touching a shroud, a bit of rigging that holds up the mast, sustained an electric shock and was immediately evacuated for medical assistance.

That boat’s electronics were completely blown out. If a similar thing had happened to Luna Rossa on Tuesday, the Italians’ cup hopes would certainly have been over.

The control systems on the carbon-masted AC75s are hugely sophisticated, equating to roughly five F1 cars’ worth of electronics. There are over 700 sensors and 30,000 data channels on board.

New Zealand were initially disqualified from the race, before the sailing was abandoned for the day. But Andy Maloney, a trimmer on the Kiwi boat, said there was never any question about what to do.

“You never want to be out there when you start seeing lightning bolts that close to the race course,” Maloney said.

“It is pretty scary. I think we did the right thing, getting out of there as soon as we could, getting our sails down and getting close to some tall superyacht rigs.

“It would destroy the boat. All the electronics were stuffed when it happened in SailGP.”

Luna Rossa then managed to outmanoeuvre New Zealand at the start of their race, forcing the Kiwis into a mistake that saw the boat come off its foils. The Italians controlled the race impressively from then on, until the lightning struck. Spithill described it as a “psychological boost” for his team to have beaten the defenders.

Telegraph, London