Re: Replacing Conventional running Lights with LED--Issues ( Reply to Navy Capt.)

I'd rather have a 2nm LED light than no light at all. My experience so far is that LEDs are also way way way way...yeah...way way way brighter than those stone age incandescents. I've bought some LED flashlights, they through an amazingly bright beam and do not, don't burn thru expensive batteries like crazy. You go on a two day regatta aboard a midget ocean racer, next thing you notice is, the third night, on your way home, your battery is dead, you're five miles out at sea. yeah, and not even enuff power to run a VHF radio if something happens. Yes, 4 miles out, or more, and maybe twenty miles from a port, and frankly, with a dead battery at night the last place you want to be is near a port! AND, if your house battery is in less than new condition, you may find your nav lights gone on the second night, or...even the first night!! I have a mast head tricolor that draws 35 watts while sailing. Add a steaming light and more, lights and power drain, and my 24 series battery is a goner. The only thing to save me is my 40 watt on board PV panel which I take out and strap onto my doghouse to recharge the house battery during daytime. It is amazing how well they work! While big ships are a danger, they are easy to spot from a great distance, and there are few of them. More likely you'll be run down by a small commercial fishing boat at night. Us 24' ocean cruisers don't have room for multiple batteries, large batteries, and certainly no room for a Honda Generator. I haven't yet converted to LED bulbs but it is on my "to-do" list. Jerry Jerry

Hi there Jerry! i am pleased as punch to know that you have one of those high-watt Tri-color mast-head lights. though i think if you look it up in the aqua-signal book; it's a 25 watt bulb in the thing. that is unless you are running the strobe at the same time? but i do differ with you in that even my 16' row-boat has the room for a little stand-alone honda #EU1000iA2 gen. at 29 Lb's, and about the size of a large battery. but so quite that you won't even notice it's running. and like any honda, it's going to start the first time every time. what the hell is anyone doing going out on the Big-Lake with out one? i have spent i lot of years out there, and i will never go with out either a honda or some plutonium. got to have something that you can rely on...... and i have got to tell you; after you see what a tri-color Led mast-dead light cost. you will think a little honda is cheap! the other thing i might interject here, and you didn't hear this from me...... to start with, how many of you have ever see a navel combatant way out at sea. and i don't mean right off the coast. you likely never have. that is because it is, and has been ever sense i was boating with the navy; a standing order that the moments of all navel combatants are by there very nature, top-secret. do you know what that means, folks? no, well..... they don't normally run with the lights on. and that is why you don't ever see them out there. now for the real gut wincher; how many world cruising sailboats have put to sea and just never been heard from again? how many of you sail around the charnel islands or san Diego area or just south-west of there, or south-east of Oahu? what all of those area's have in common is that they are submarine "play & transit" areas. what do you think would happen to say a Cal-40 if a steel forging about 12" in diameter came on it from the side at even 4 knots and slammed right on through and out the other side? oh, the boys down there will notice. but there is no way that they are going to stop that "strategic weapon system" and call the USCG letting the whole would know where they are just to save your butts. guess again. and that boats deck-log is "top- Secret"....... ant no buddy going to know where you went down. and fiver is not going to say any more so you figure it out how cheap you want to be with your batteries. but this kid has been there and done that. and shes not stupid....... fiver ****************************************** --- In Ca… [at] yahoogroups.com, Gerald Sobel <sobel_solar@...> wrote: > > I'd rather have a 2nm LED light than no light at all. My experience so far is that LEDs are also way way way way...yeah...way way way brighter than those stone age incandescents. I've bought some LED flashlights, they through an amazingly bright beam and do not, don't burn thru expensive batteries like crazy. > > You go on a two day regatta aboard a midget ocean racer, next thing you notice is, the third night, on your way home, your battery is dead, you're five miles out at sea. yeah, and not even enuff power to run a VHF radio if something happens. Yes, 4 miles out, or more, and maybe twenty miles from a port, and frankly, with a dead battery at night the last place you want to be is near a port! > > AND, if your house battery is in less than new condition, you may find your nav lights gone on the second night, or...even the first night!! I have a mast head tricolor that draws 35 watts while sailing. Add a steaming light and more, lights and power drain, and my 24 series battery is a goner. The only thing to save me is my 40 watt on board PV panel which I take out and strap onto my doghouse to recharge the house battery during daytime. It is amazing how well they work! > > While big ships are a danger, they are easy to spot from a great distance, and there are few of them. More likely you'll be run down by a small commercial fishing boat at night. Us 24' ocean cruisers don't have room for multiple batteries, large batteries, and certainly no room for a Honda Generator. > > I haven't yet converted to LED bulbs but it is on my "to-do" list. > Jerry > > > Jerry >