LED Anchor light ?

[James V]

Has anyone changed the anchor light to an LED type?
This should save a few amps per night.

[Moe]

James, that's high on our priority list, and not only for the power savings, but for not having to worry about dropping the mast to replace a burned out bulb just as it gets dark. We run our 10W (0.8A) light about 10 hours/night, so the savings would be 6AH/night.

It we don't build our own, the Orca Green Marine Luxeon light with photodiode would be my choice.

jmdefino and ronacarme built their own, and Ron used the Luxeon LED. See this thread for more info.

[Chip Hindes]

Wow! $129! Looking at dollars per amp hour per night, I believe instead I'll just buy another battery. Or two. Or three. Or better yet, put the $$ toward the EU2000 which is already on the list anyway.

Seriously, I used to burn my anchor light all night almost whenever I was at anchor. But lately I've been taking to heart the "when not in a designated anchorage" phrase in the regs. What sense does it make to burn the anchor light when you're in a mooring field where 90% of the boats are unoccupied and therefore unlit? And yet a few weeks ago all our sailing partners did it. Not me.

Even tougher to justify when you only burn your anchor light occasionally.

[James V]

The Mac's are great boats, you can Mod to whatever style of boating you want. If you want to go crusing without having to go to the dock for some weeks, low amp draw is important. 6 amp hours is about 1/2 hour engine run time to charge up the batteries. The other advantage is it stays lit.

Chip, I can see your point on the cost for weekend sailing, however for longer time on the water, LED's are a great way to go.

[Moe]

There's no option on the lakes in Ohio state parks. You must use an anchor light in the designated anchor areas. Not a bad idea, either, with the infrequent bass bubba running through this no-wake zone at 30-40 mph at night, usually with no nav lights. By and large, though, most of the guys who fish all night there are pretty courteous and give an anchored boat a wide berth.

LEDs are also good if the slip you moor in doesn't have electricity.

[Chip Hindes]

I'm not denying that low current draw is important. If your usage pattern is as you state it and you believe it's justified, or if you just have $$ to burn, go for it.

I've had my X for five years, been on several longer trips, including one away from shore power for ten days. I enjoy sailing much more than powering, and believe I run my motor less than almost any other Mac owner I know.

And I believe I can count the times I've run my motor less than an hour on any given day on a closed fist. Also, given an adequate sized house battery, it's not the usage over a given day that matters, it's the average over the long term, so if there were some days I ran it less, and I've forgotten, I'm quite sure that I made up for it the next day or the day after that by running it two or three or more hours. Heck, when it comes right down to it, if I had no other choice I'd not be averse to running the motor for a half hour or so, while sailing, just to charge the batteries. And mine is a noisy, smelly gas hog two-stroke.

Even if you never run your motor, at 6Ah per day for the anchor light, an 80Ah battery will power it for more than six days without recharging at all and without exceeding Moe's magic 50% discharge level. Heck, if you're only going to do it one or two times a year, it won't instantly kill your house battery to run past the 50% discharge level. It might only last four years instead of five.

I know once you've bought your 100,000 hour LED light you'll (at least theoretically) never have to buy another, but at $40 for an 80Ah marine battery at WalMart, you could do buy a new battery three times in 12 years, and still have some enough left over for battery hold down hardware, compared to the LED light. And BTW, we use thousands of 50,000 hour LEDs per year in the product my company manufactures. That's nearly six years of continuous on time, which I'll wager none of our products actually sees, and yet we regularly replace fried LEDs on products which have been in the field only a fraction of that time.

I know, you've got other stuff that uses power as well, and you can't just run out and buy another house battery each time you put another 6Ah per day power consumer on line, but I still believe on the whole it's pretty hard to justify a $130 anchor light under any criteria.

I also know, $130 isn't a huge amount compared to some of the other stuff we blow money on, but part of my resistance is purely philosphical. Looking at the simple technology, materials, and even throwing in an hefty kicker for engineering, R&D, and reasonable profit, for the life of me I can't see why an LED anchor light ought to cost $130. It looks to me like the only explanation is the common "MMF", or "Marine Multiplication Factor. When the price is reduced to something reasonable and justifiable, I'll probably buy one.

Finally, and just to jerk your chain one more time, my Aqua Signal Series 20 anchor light draws 5W not 10W; so all the above arguments times two (-$21 at West Marine if you don't already have an anchor light).

[Moe]

I don't disagree that $130 is pretty outrageous for an LED light. The Luxeon side-emitting LED costs $6.25 plus shipping, and the heat sink, current regulator chip, and resistor are a coupla bucks. I suspect the high price is due a lot more to lack of economies of scale and when a major supplier begins selling a lot of them, the price will come down the way it has with LED flashlights.

It looks like Hella Marine just introduced one too, but I haven't found any retailer listing them yet or a price. I do note the heat sink on top.

[Chip Hindes]

What you're saying is, just like the LED flashlights, a whole bunch of early adopters must buy these, maybe just because they're cool (which I freely admit) at the outrageous price of $130, in order to get the volume high enough for the economies of scale to begin to kick in, so they can then drop the price to something more reasonable.

Guess it couldn't happen that it would be priced more reasonably, in order to stimulate higher demand to justify economies of scale at the front end.

Are you sure it's not just the MMF?

Chicken or egg?

What am I doing? All you potential early adopters, forget everything I've written. Order your LED anchor light today. Heck, order two just in case your 100,000 hour LED craps out. Order LED masthead and running lights as well. That way (assuming they use the same technology, maybe even the same electronics) I'll be able to buy mine at a reasonable price a lot earlier than I figured.

Thanks for bringing this into focus for me, Moe.

[Moe]

I knew you'd see it my way, Chip.

I can see LED nav-lights for those who sail at night, but can't see going that route for the masthead light, which will only be on with the outboard alternator charging.

[Chip Hindes]

I can see LED nav-lights for those who sail at night, but can't see going that route for the masthead light, which will only be on with the outboard alternator charging.

Regardless of which light you're running (anchor or masthead) the total power consumption is exactly the same, and you have to make it up by running the motor. Whether you're running it while actually using the light, or at some other time, you still have to run it for the same amount to get the power used back into the battery.

I was merely trying to avoid confusing the issue. Now you've gone and confused things way more by injecting further sensibleness into the equation.

In any case, you've totally missed the point yet again. I'm trying to get the early adopters to buy, buy, buy, regardless of what makes sense, in order to realize the economies of scale and thereby bring the price down.

Next thing you know, you'll be pointing out that if you sail all night, you'll need LED running lights but not an LED anchor light, since the latter will never be used.

Instead, let me point out that if you run both anchor and masthead lights at the same time, your savings will be double. If you run all LED lights, they will double again and you probably won't even need an alternator on your motor. It's the electrical equivalent of perpetual motion.

[ALX357]

spend the money on solar chargers powerful enough to charge the night-light load back into the batteries, and you can afford the electricity to use whatever kind of bulbs you want, as well as whatever is left over for any other battery deficits from alternator charging.

[Catigale]

Nice point ALX....i was thinking same.


I got the Davis traditional anchor light for CapeCod trip which has a photo cell which turns it off automatically at sunrise. I wouldnt turn it on until sleep time, so only about 6 hours of on time would apply.

I confess not a single boat at any Harbor or anchorage had their anchor light on, so I followed local custom.

WHen I bought my VW New Beetle I got a 'free' 5W solar panel charger which came with the car. I keep it on the boat for fun just to get some free photons, but I could make up my anchor light draw with this gizmo.

Good thing I have 3/8 chain so it wont break from all that yanking...but Chip as usual makes some pretty good points. LEDS are definitely selling on the cool factor rather than what 'makes sense' for most of us imho.

[Beam's Reach]

Before I saw this thread this morning, I was reading my new Mountain Equipment Co-Op catalogue. Sailing has been taking time away from my other passion, wilderness canoe camping, and the catalogue may be as close as I get this summer.

It's intersting that they have LED head lamps with 180 hour burn time on 2 AA batteries for $49. And that's Canadian, so that's about $3.50 US . There is also an upgrade kit that will convert a AA Mini Maglite to a three LED module for $8. Can the technology for an anchor light really be that different? I'm with Chip...everyone else should buy at least two and I'll wait for a couple of years.

In the meantime, I have a solar garden lantern that I hang from the halyard at night. It stays out all the time and helps the kids to find the boat when we drive past the marina at night..."there's our boat!". Bright enough to see, but not bright enought to bother anyone spending the night on their boat. It might not meet the 2 nautical mile requirement...but I doubt I'd ever get called on it around here.

[Chip Hindes]

spend the money on solar chargers powerful enough to charge the night-light load back into the batteries, and you can afford the electricity to use whatever kind of bulbs you want, as well as whatever is left over for any other battery deficits from alternator charging.

At West Marine $150 for a 18W solar panel, not so much.

The below are not my numbers. If you're interested in reading up, see the West Marine Advisor on solar panels.

Summarized: Rule of thumb says a solar panel will get you approximately 1/2 of the watt rating, in Amp-hour per day, if aimed. Further rule of thumb says if unaimed, cut that by half. No matter how hard you work at it, it's pretty difficult to aim a solar panel on a moving sailboat.

For a 5W anchor light, burned ten hours per night, you'll need 50 watt-hour, or just over about 4 amp hours. That means 17 watts worth of solar panel. If your anchor light is 10W, about 35W of solar panels.

Back to West Marine. The 18W solar panel, just right for the 5W light, is $150. You'll need two of them for the 10W light, $300. For the bigger one you can get a 50W panel for $560 and have a few Ah left over to power some other stuff (but not much other stuff). Don't forget about the real estate they take up (14 x 40" each for the 18W) and you have to figure out some way to mount them.

If you want to compare dollars, the solar panels cost about $33 per amp hour. Moe said his LED anchor light would save 6Ah per day, at $130, that's about $22 per Ah. Even minus the West Marine MMF on the solar panels, you'd be better off spending your money on overpriced LED lights to save power than on solar panels to produce it.

By contrast, an 80Ah battery discharged to the 50% level will power a 5W anchor light for 10 days, a 10W light for 5 days at about $1 per amp hour, though of course you have to eventually get it recharged by running the motor or plugging it into shore power.

Catigale's 5W solar panel, unaimed will produce 1.25 Ah per day. He already owns one so that one's free, but he'll need two or three more of them to recharge after burning a 5W anchor light all night.

[Moe]

Well said, Chip. I've been following other RVers' experiences with solar, and the rule of thumb that a solar panel, mounted horizontally on a roof top, produces 1/4 of its wattage rating as amp-hours/day, is pretty widely supported by those who measure with an amp-hour meter and track this closely. But that's best case at end of June. The same owners report only 2/3 of that around the spring and fall equinoxes. That's why we spent the money on Honda generators, rather than solar, for the Airstream.

When you throw in the heeling of a sailboat that will sometimes be heeled away from the sun, as well as the shadowing of the companionway hatch by the mainsail, and even by the boom if not moored just right, I don't see a solar panel on the only really available real estate on a Mac even achieving the 1/4 of wattage figure. Besides, when anchored that's covered by our boom tarp anyway.

Finally, given the inefficiency of battery charging, it also makes more sense not to use the power in the first place, rather than try to make it up.