Anchor light

Oct 19, 2020
1
Hunter 380 Lake Lewisville
Here is a picture of me and my anchor light. I cannot find a replacement for this thing? Any thoughts? I am having a hard time even getting the housing off as you can see. Any advice on how to replace bulb or housing? Where to find? Or do I need to upgrade the whole thing?
 

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Mar 26, 2011
3,399
Corsair F-24 MK I Deale, MD
Not a clue.

However, you can see a weakness of many bosun's chair systems. You can't get above the masthead. With a Mastmate (and many other systems) you can get rib-high or so, which makes the work much easier.


You can also see my weird looking early-LED anchor light. Not easy to open and nothing you can service away from the workbench anyway. I ended up replacing it a few years later with a Tecniq M10. Much smaller and lighter. The older LED light was such a cool hand-crafted piece
I kept it on a bookshelf. The M10 works, but how can something that resembles a Cylon be cool on a sailboat?
 
Jun 1, 2007
265
O'Day 322 Mt.Sinai
Haha! You can just sit up there with a flashlight! Damn, I'll never go up my mast! My goto company for things lights is Marinebeam.com

Great products, great support.
 
Jan 22, 2008
8,050
Beneteau 323 Annapolis MD
...I prefer a camplight hung from the forestay, .../QUOTE]

Someone will know the name of the cove in Marathon, FL (IIRC). We pulled in then saw all the solar lamps from Home Depot hanging in the breeze. They made sense for THAT anchorage. However, some months later we saw in the Boat U.S. magazine the Coasties had raided the cove, handing out citations because the lights did not meet the requirement they could be seen from 2 miles away. Probably they could not, but the cove was maybe a 1/4 mile across. If two miles away, an observer would be out in the ocean, on the other side of the peninsula that formed the cove. All practicality aside, the lights did NOT meet the requiremnets. I would think most of the boats DID have their mast anchor light as backup.
 
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Mar 26, 2011
3,399
Corsair F-24 MK I Deale, MD
The other problem with many of the solar lights is that they do not stay lit all night, particularly as the batteries age. No one knows if their patio lights wink out at 4 AM.
 
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dLj

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Mar 23, 2017
3,371
Belliure 41 Sailing back to the Chesapeake
Here is a picture of me and my anchor light. I cannot find a replacement for this thing? Any thoughts? I am having a hard time even getting the housing off as you can see. Any advice on how to replace bulb or housing? Where to find? Or do I need to upgrade the whole thing?
I replaced my entire assembly, but I also took the mast down and worked from the ground. I had to make a special adaptor to mount the new light, machine new mounting holes in the mast head, fit the adaptor, mount the light on the adaptor. I don't think I could have done that with the mast up. Or at least it would have been so much more difficult that dropping the mast was a no-brainer...

dj
 
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Mar 26, 2011
3,399
Corsair F-24 MK I Deale, MD
I replaced my entire assembly, but I also took the mast down and worked from the ground. I had to make a special adaptor to mount the new light, machine new mounting holes in the mast head, fit the adaptor, mount the light on the adaptor. I don't think I could have done that with the mast up. Or at least it would have been so much more difficult that dropping the mast was a no-brainer...

dj
I had to make an adapter (the new light was too short to see over the wind vane). Had to tap new holes. Mast up, no problem, but it did take two trips, about 15 minutes apart. The addapter was a length of PVC pipe the same diameter as the light. Perfect fit.

It would have taken longer just to get a price on dropping the mast....

a. Comfortable harness with extra padding.
b. High position.
c. Organize you tools in an electrician's ladder bag.
d. Many, many years experience climbing and working at height.

No bumble fingers, don't drop anything.
 

dLj

.
Mar 23, 2017
3,371
Belliure 41 Sailing back to the Chesapeake
I had to make an adapter (the new light was too short to see over the wind vane). Had to tap new holes. Mast up, no problem, but it did take two trips, about 15 minutes apart. The adapter was a length of PVC pipe the same diameter as the light. Perfect fit.

It would have taken longer just to get a price on dropping the mast....

a. Comfortable harness with extra padding.
b. High position.
c. Organize you tools in an electrician's ladder bag.
d. Many, many years experience climbing and working at height.

No bumble fingers, don't drop anything.
Nice summary of how to work at the top of the mast. Keeping the mast up or having to take it down does depend upon just how much work, and the extent of the work you need to do there. There is a lot of work that can be done with the mast up - perhaps more than one may think, especially when hanging up there. :waycool: The high tension electric line workers are amazing what they can do hanging from the treetops, so to speak... LOL

dj
 
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