Navigation Lights

M

mcc272

New member
Since I have completely rewired my boat, and seeing LED nav lights on a friend's boat, I decided to replace the original side Perko nav lights. I have had a concern that the grapefruit sized nav lights on the cabin sides were too low for good visibility and that when the bow lifts, it might somewhat obscure the lights. I used Aqua Signal Series 32 LED side lights and mounted them on the side of the roof overhang. The forward edge of the fixture is even with the forward end of the pilothouse. I discarded the supplied mounting device (a blind compression type thing) and used a longer 6-32 machine screw so I could bolt them to the roof overhang and use a nylock nut and washer. I drilled the forward hole for the wires and drilled straight into the pilothouse into the upper forward corners. The lights come with AWG 22 wire which is very small so I used heat shrink tubing to give the wires some protection and bedded the wires where they penetrated into the cabin. The installation was extremely easy.

The results -- the lights are higher and much more visible as a result. No chance of being obscured. They do not seem to reflect on the bow rails. The LED lights are extremely bright. To me they appear to be about twice as bright as the Perko lights. The Perkos each had a 10W, 0.83A bulb. The LEDs are each 1.5W, 0.12A. The installation is extremely clean. Furthermore, with the replacement of these lights, I now have a boat that has no bulbs at all so stocking a bunch of bulbs or trying to replace them is a thing of the past.

Jim
 
There always has to be a doom and gloom guy at every party - I guess it is my job this time (sigh)

Make sure that your new lights and mountings meet the angular visibility requirements... Look in Chapmans, or do a quick google on the web to get the maximum degrees of overlap bow and stern between red and green, and also the minimum angles and then actually measure the light spread of your new installation...

If there is a 10 or 20 degree discrepancy, will the world come to an end? No, of course not... But if Officer Purvis T-bones you at 3AM in his bass boat and your lights are subsequently found to not meet specs, then you caused the accident and the ten shots of Tequila he had that night won't even be mentioned...
 
I was at Cabelas the other day and noticed they had the plug in light for the white all around/anchor in LED style. I did compare it to the Perko and looks like plug and play to me. Cost was a fifty dollar bill with a nickel for change. I did not tumble at the time but think I will as looks to be a good safety update. The side lights may also work out for me.
Bob Heselberg Eatonville Wa
 
Denny O --

Before changing the location, I checked for potential overlap and there did not appear to be much. I looked carefully at the forward cabin side and the roof overhang. If anything, the roof overhang is closer to parallel to the centerline of the boat than the forward cabin sides. As a result, I think it is likely that the potential for overlap is reduced when you move the lights. When you are head on to the boat, you get both lights and fairly quickly when moving to the side, you lose one.

Jim
 
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