The first lightning strike was about a mile away, so George Haddad, 71, and his three fishing friends huddled under the hardtop of Time Out, his 31-foot Stamas, about seven miles off Grand Cay in the Bahamas. “It made me cringe,” said Haddad, who’s from Palm City.
The second strike hit the boat. Haddad, who had both hands on the wheel, felt the strike surge through his body. “It felt like somebody hit me with a hammer,” he told TCPalm.com.
The fishing trip, which had started earlier that day under clear blue skies, had turned deadly. The strike hit the boat’s antenna, blew a hole in the hardtop, knocked the hatch off the electronics console, fried the electronics, and damaged the engines. In the picture above, Haddad, in the yellow shirt, holds what was left of a graphite fishing rod.
The boom from the strike was so loud that all four men lost their hearing for several minutes. Then one dropped the lunch hook by hand to keep the boat from drifting onto some nearby rocks. Another sent out a Mayday call on a handheld VHF, the only radio that was still working.
A good Samaritan on a nearby boat heard the call and towed Time Out back to Grand Cay. Later, Sea Tow brought the boat back home, a trip that took 19 hours. Boat repairs will take a few weeks, but after that Haddad says he plans to go fishing again. When he does, he says he’ll keep a sharp eye out for the weather. Read more:
