LED Lights

Saving power is of a high importance to most cruisers and with the much cheapness of led lights, it is one of the first steps to reducing power consumption. You can buy fancy overpriced ones or cheap n cheerful, I opted for cheap n cheerful ones, from fleabay and am glad I did.

Most of them cost under one UK pound, I tried to order a few different colour spectrums to see how kind they were to the eyes, the 5000k ones are just too blue and very harsh, the warm whites have a green tinge but are soft to the eye, the daylight ones (around 4000k) are good all rounders though a little harsh.

For the nav lights, do not use white ones in coloured lenses, use green for green and red for red, with the nav lights its a tad more complex. make sure you get good quality waterproof lights.

I had about 30 G4 lights to replace inside and the 1 pounds much cheapness units from fleabay are fine, don't glitch with engine or charger or anything else, some are 6 months old so far and still fine. The only issue with them is the pins are a bit flimsy and i broke one of them trying to get them into the tighter fittings (ie more corroded sockets).

The nav lights I fitted just recently and are good looking units, plenty bright and save heaps of power down from 60w to 5 w, the anchor light I used a cheaper one sold for cars, figuring it is not going to get the same abuse as the nav lights which are low down on my boat and prone to salt water.

On a side note, while out playing with the new dinghy we some some mikie whales, when one surfaced and jumped out of the water less than a 100 foot away discretion took the better part and we put the throttle down to make some distance ;)

 

10 foot dinghy vs large whale... no contest, stay back!