12 July 2010

Lights

A few weekends ago I replaced the two "courtesy" LED lights in the cockpit that were failing with a string of 7 of these LED lights from Jaycar:


I was pretty impressed with the result. There are 3 LEDs on each stick and they come in a "string" of 10 sticks per pack for about $24 per pack. You can cut the cabling between the sticks anywhere so you can mount them in strings up to 10 abreast.

So last weekend I replaced the 2 failing lights in the head, one near the door with a string of 5 sticks (15 LEDs) and one near the seacocks (good to have that area lit up) with 3 sticks. It's nice and bright in there now, and wasn't before, which lead to shaving being a hassle.

According to the blurb on the Jaycar web site they are waterproof and submersible, and the cabling appears to be the good tinned stuff. I'd want to epoxy over the cut ends of cable for wet area use, and pretty much anywhere on a boat counts as a "wet area" so I'll be going over them next weekend to tidy that up. They came with this double sided mounting tape which I didn't trust for marine use, so they are in fact mounted using epoxy.

Now I'm considering whether to mount some more out the front of the dodger to provide a bit of light on the foredeck for sitting around on summer evenings, and perhaps replace the spreader lights with a string of these.