LED Bulbs

Sailor’s Solutions has some LED replacement bulbs for less than half the price of those available at West Marine.  These bulbs have 19 LEDs in them but the bulbs from West Marine (they’re Davis brand, I think) have only 6.  This makes the Sailor’s Solutions bulbs quite a bit brighter but they still only use a reported 0.175 amps.  (The conventional bulbs they replace use from 3/4 to 1 amp.)

I bought a couple of these to try.  They arrived yesterday so last night I went out to the boat, rigged the TopClimber, and put the new bulbs in my spreader lights.  Very nice.  The ammeter doesn’t move when I turn them on and they seem at least as bright as the old conventional bulbs.  This is great for me since I like to leave the spreader lights on, in addition to the masthead light, when I anchor in a busy anchorage.  This is really a great use of the technology and I’m hoping someone will soon get bulbs like these approved for use in navigation lights.  They could save a considerable amount of power on a long passage.

Sailor’s Solutions is a great organisation, by the way.  They have items that are not generally available anywhere else, some things I didn’t even know existed.

The weather was pretty good for an evening sail after I got down from the spreaders so I went out for a couple of hours.  My wife thinks it’s somehow odd or wrong that I enjoy singlehanding a 34 footer but winches and roller furling make it a pretty easy job.  Heavier air is a bit harder since the boat’s really set up for a racing crew as far as reefing goes.  It usually requires a couple of trips between the cabin-top winches and the mast to get the reef tucked in all snug.

Last night was not reefing weather, however, and it was wonderful.  Started out with about 7–10 knots and dropped to dead calm just after sundown.  That’s PNW summer weather.