I was on the wonderful island of Guam recently. Interesting place where just about every tourist is from Japan. These Japanese tourists are such troopers. I was there a week and all it did was rain the WHOLE time. These tourists didnt care, they were out at the pool, walking the beaches and such…yes, in the rain. Funniest thing I saw was a lady wading through the water at the beach behind my hotel…with an umbrella!!! Anyway, these japanese tourist troopers also enjoyed parasailing…even during storms complete with lightning. I got to thinking…does the boat provide enough of a ground path for the lightning to nail this giant antenna and fry the tourist and the boat? May sound kind of cruel but I kept watching them sailing through these storms on the chance of capturing a glimpse of what would happen…
Although the (presumably) fiberglass boat and the (again presumably) nylon rope provides some isulation, every object connected to earth sends up streamers towards the stepped leader of an impending lightning strike. The higher the object is above ground, the more likely it is to be struck. Once the stepped leader touches an uprising streamer, the lightning flashes over and millions of amps flows through the narrow conductive channel that is formed. so, yes, there is a serious risk of being struck during this sort of activity when lightning is present. If you really want to live on the edge, use an aluminum boat and metal cable.
While growing up on Guam it stormed at least once a week (or more), but as I recall, I only heard thunder once or twice a year.
On Guam it’s so rare to have electrical storms, and even rarer to have cloud/ground lightning strikes, that the parasail company probably never even thought about the issue.
Well the one week I was there I can asure you there were electrical storms.