When I bought Priorities in 2011, her previous owner had done a good job making upgrades to her systems. One upgrade was a partial conversion to LED light bulbs in the cabin. LED lights can save considerable amounts of power, especially important on a sailboat using battery power when anchored overnight.
Unfortunately, the choices available for LED light bulbs during the previous owner’s tenure were very limited. The main cabin LEDs were a nasty bluish white that left the cabin feeling cold and dark even when they were all illuminated. I wanted better, more modern alternatives.
During the course of a season, I ended up replacing all the cabin lights, nav lights, and the anchor light with LED bulbs. I didn’t even need to replace any fixtures… I found LED bulbs to fit each fixture. Simply replacing the bulbs, rather than entire fixtures, saved a bunch of time and money.
Many of the bulbs I used are made by Dr. LED, and available for purchase at many online chandleries. I’ve also had excellent luck with Marinebeam’s online store.
Due to their significant advantages in efficiency, we use fewer amp hours for lighting despite using much more lighting now. As an example, with all the main cabin and galley lights on, we only use 2.4 Amps of power now with LEDs compared to 9.2 Amps with incandescents before. Fewer amp hours consumed means less that need to be recharged back into the batteries via solar or diesel power, and less overall wear on the batteries, too.
The color of the new lights are much better, also. The tint of LEDs are typically given as a color temperature in degrees Kelvin. Incandescents are frequently in the 2800K range, where “warm white” has a slight yellowish tint. My nasty old bluish LEDs were around 3500K. The newer LED bulbs that I’ve found are right around 3000K, which is barely “whiter” than an incandescent. 3000K is a vast improvement, though, and really brings out the warm colors of the interior brightwork. This helps uplift the crew’s mood, especially on those evenings when it’s cold and rainy outside.
Priorities is a Catalina 400 Mark I built in 1995. Other Catalina owners with boats of the same vintage may recognize some of the fixtures in these photos, and hopefully can realize some of the energy savings I did.
I still haven’t replaced the cabin “sheer lights” yet. Most are burned out, so it needs to be done. Amazon has a selection of LED light strips, though I’m worried they’ll either be too bright or an undesired color temperature. Feel free to comment below if you find an attractive replacement!
Another highly valuable LED conversion is the anchor light. Since an anchor light is required to be displayed all night when anchoring almost everywhere, its power consumption adds up to a bunch of amp hours.
I added a light to the masthead Windex by converting the Davis Light Kit to an LED (it’s now available with an LED directly from Davis). To power the new light, I had to run an additional wire in the mast conduit alongside the VHF and anchor light cables. It’s a single, red, positive wire that connects to the “Running Lights” circuit. It shares a ground wire with the anchor light.
I’ve noticed some other boats have lighted Windexes (Windices?) whose bulbs are visible to other boats. This can look like a steaming light, leading to confusion about right-of-way at night. To minimize this, I wrapped the bulb in electrical tape, then secured the tape with a cable tie… now the light only points straight up at the reflective components of the Windex.
The running lights (I also call them “position” lights or “nav” lights) were upgraded to LED bulbs, too. Since my boat has separate side lights on each side of the bow, power consumption with incandescents was a whopping 5 Amps (50 Amp-hours for a 10 hour overnight passage!). With LEDs, it’s a tiny 0.4 Amps, or 4 Amp-hours a night, even including both compass lights and the LED lighted windex.
Priorities’ running light fixtures are Aqua Signal 40s. When installing an LED bulb behind a colored lens (such as with running lights), you have to use the specific color LED bulb. A white LED bulb behind a colored lens won’t work properly.
The Dr. LED bulbs designed for running lights come with a foil reflector that I had to stick onto the bulb once I figured out the proper orientation. Be sure to do this… it significantly improves the bulbs’ brightness.
The Coast Guard has certification requirements for running lights based on vessel size. Replacing the bulbs can affect this certification, so carefully check the packaging on any bulbs you intend on using to make sure you stay legal. Using “illegal” lights may open an owner up to liability in the event of a nighttime collision with another vessel.
Summary of Exterior Light Part Numbers (see photos for interior lights):
- Red running: Aqua Signal 40 with Dr LED 8001764
- Green running: Aqua Signal 40 with Dr LED 8001771
- White stern running: Aqua Signal 40 with Dr LED 8001757
- Steaming: not converted to LED
- Anchor: Perko 200 SWB with Dr LED 8001757
- Windex: Davis Instruments #3200