Up the Mast!

This is a photo of Marvin installing new Led bulbs on top of the mast which is 78 ft off the water. Ruth hauls me up in my boson's chair using the main halyard on the electric winch, and brings me down manually. That means by hand, carefully, no quick, 2 foot drops! I usually treat her nice a day of two before going up, since she is the beneficiary of our insurance policy! When waves pass by and the boat rocks, it is amplified way up there and I hug the mast.

All boats need to have navigation lights, red-port, green-starboard' and white-stern. We have a complete set of navigation lights mounted on the deck, but deck lights are not very useful in mid-ocean when the waves are high. It is much better to have navigation lights mounted on top of the mast as well, where they can be seen from a long distance. The USA standard is 2 miles visibility. The Australian standard is 5 miles. Regular incandescent bulbs use at least 25 watts of power, each - all night, but the new Australian led bulbs (50 leds) use only 3.5 watts of power.

When you see a ship or boat at sea, if you see a red light the ship will pass to your left - you are looking at the port side. If you see his green light he will pass to your right. IF you see both a red and green light - he is coming directly at you and you better take action. Ships under power are supposed to give right-of-way to small sailboats. If you count on that, you better have your will made out. Both the small boat and the big ship are operating on full autopilot. There may, or may not , be someone on the bridge of either one. The big ship is going about 20 knots and the sailboat is moving about 5 knots.

We have now installed a new navigation tricolor led bulb and a white anchor light on top of the mast. We also have led bulbs in the cockpit, salon, galley, and bunks. They work fine- maybe not quite as bright as the halogen lights, but they use 90% less power - yeh technology!