A couple of weeks back I was at a local dealership dropping off my boat for some service work. There was a big center console right in front of me in line with trips on the back. As I approached the service counter I overheard the owner and the service manager discussing repowering the boat. The rig could not have been any more than two years old so as I stood there scratching my head on why this guy was repowering a late model boat when in walked an insurance adjuster. As it turn out the boat was apparently struck by lightning over the weekend. Fortunately the boat was tied up to a dock at the time and unoccupied when the strike occurred. While there was no visible damage, the strike apparently fried the entire electrical system including the all electronics and all three motors. This reminded me of an article that was posted two summers ago by Seaworthy/ Boat US. As you can see below, water related activities rank the highest for deaths related to strikes and South Carolina ranks just over to 10% of the entire country for lighting related fatalities.
http://old.charlestonfishing.com/news/When-Lightning-Strikes.pdf