Jack,
Thanks for sharing this. We love LEDs like so many others of us do. We have
gone 100 percent LED on Nav and anchor light too. During overnighter's we
are so pleased to have about 4 more amps to use - if we want to use it. We
run on 2 130Watt solar panels and we have no stand alone generators. In 6
months we burned less than 50 gallons of gas cruising from Tampa to the
Exumas, Jumentos and several other islands. My point being is we don't need
our engine alternators to get by and this is mostly due to the LED lights.
I have seen from my boat other boats with just the tri light on and it
appeared not unlike a colorful overly bright star.
I wanted to relate a story about a boat sailing overnight. As the crew
changed watch, the person going down to rest informed the other one that
there was a sailboat nearby but not too close. About 1 second later the
fresh mate looked toward the boat. He slammed the auto helm off and spun the
wheel just in time to miss the other vessel by 2 inches. The problem came
from the tri lights being from a single point on the boat. In this
configuration with only these lights on a very dark night when you cannot
even see the horizon there is no way to even guess at the distance to this
boat.
I don't know the best solutions for this other than burning another light
when on a very dark passage to give a frame of reference.
While this is unsolicited, I hope that you are already aware of this and if
not that this may be of some value.
Warm regards
Gary Oelze
Sol Surfin
_____
From: scoaa-members-bounces@xxxxxxxxx
[mailto:scoaa-members-bounces@xxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jack Hogan
Sent: Saturday, September 04, 2010 00:20
To: scoaa-members@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [Scoaa-members] LED Navigation Light Bulbs
Hi Mike,
When the housing of the stock anchor light of my 12 year old SW1000 crumbled
in my hands a couple of years ago as I was trying to replace its bulb, I
installed the Orca Green Marine Trianchor light in its place. It provides
both anchoring and nav lights in one tight package with photodiode (turns
itself on automatically at night and off in the morning) and strobe (easy to
find your boat in dark nights at busy anchorages). They are coast guard
approved and power consumption at anchor or navigating is less than a
quarter what it used to be.
In order to have the strobe function I have had to run another (tiny,
single) conductor down the mast: that was a real bitch of a job. If I had
to re-do it I would probably buy the unit without the strobe so that I could
just use the existing wires of the defunct anchor light.
Cheers,
Jack
_____
From: Michael Zotzky <mzotzky@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: scoaa-members@xxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tue, August 31, 2010 1:44:35 AM
Subject: [Scoaa-members] LED Navigation Light Bulbs
Has anyone replaced the bulbs in their nav lights with LED bulbs? I think
the Seawind 1000 has Aqua Signal 25 series lights. Dr LED makes bulbs that
fit, but there are lots of posts on sailboatowners website from people that
were not happy with Dr LED bulb life, nor claims they are Coast Guard
approved but not. The local chandlery that stocks both Dr LED and Ancor
recommends the Dr LED for long life. Conflicting advice.
Mike
