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welsh said..
Hello all. some further opinions please . I'm at the pointy end of completely refurbishing, my mast and boom, and I am contemplating what lighting to reinstall.I'm leaning towards a Qled masthead, and perhaps some deck lighting from the spreaders
any suggestions re-better brands, and extent of lighting will be greatly appreciated I'm also changing the interior lights to LED
Cheers to all? Welsh
I had the masthead, anchor and deck lights changed to LED when the standing rigging was replaced and have just changed the navigation and stern lights to LED as well. About half the interior lights are LED as well. The power consumption at night has dropped from about 5 A to about 0.5 A. Over a 12 hour "night" (when the sun is too low to charge the house battery), that saves about 54 Ahr, basically the usable capacity of the 105 Ahr house battery. Changing to LEDs all round means I can now run the lights and the tiller pilot all night without getting a low battery alarm. I'll still upgrade the house battery to 200 Ahr of Lithium batteries at some stage (2x100 Ahr slimline will fit in the same space) but it doesn't have to be done right now.
I used another brand of LED nav light at first because they were the same form factor as the old ones and could be fitted without drilling more holes in the brackets on the pulpit but have the QLED units waiting to go on. The QLED are much better built and better sealed but also about 3 times the price. They come with 2 m of cable so you can get the wire down the pulpit or pushpit and into the boat before having to splice the wires, avoiding a splice on the outside. The cable with the QLED lights is a larger diameter, though, and I expect to have to ease the hole where the cable runs through the deck (under 1 of the pulpit uprights) when it comes time to fit them.
Cheers,
Kinora