bow light
- Thread starter tgrayson
- Start date
Crazy thought: how does MacGregor tint the port and stbd sides of the fixture? Could there be red and green colored lenses inside the fixture? What if one came loose and is overlapping the other i.e. red over green? Would that make blue on one side and white on the other? Crazy notion right?
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Assuming the lights are pretty old, the colors fade from UV exposure. The red turns clear and the green can turn blue or yellow. You need to replace the lenses.
When we began having problems with our Aqua Signal lights I replaced them fixture and all with the new LED integral, sealed light fixtures. They even have heat sinks built in. No further problems. Cheap at ten times the price if my nav lights function EVERY time I turn them on!.
I'm with @capta - navigation lights are now so cheap (compared to other boating stuff) that it's just not worth taking it apart and fixing. Go to a reputable brand either from our own SBO Store Navigation Lights or another reputable location like supporting your local marine retailer or check out Marinebeam, too. For the price of a round of beers, you can have new, LED, never need to replace anything in your lifetime!
My boat uses a combo green and red lens with an incandescent bulb. I thought I was being smart replacing the incandescent bulb with a warm white LED bulb, for greater efficiency, and matching more closely the color value of the original. Even so, I think the LED does not put out the same spectrum of light, and when motoring out to a friend on the hook one evening with the lights on, he noticed that my bow light looked like blue and orange/yellow to him. I have since done what I should have done in the beginning, and replaced the bow LED with a Lunasea LLB-189B-21-0Z - Bicolor red/green bi-color light. The red and green now look absolutely correct through the bi-color green/red lens of the fixture. (Bottom bulb in attached picture.)
I thought about upgrading the lamps in my existing housing but then I found LED bow lights for $10 on amazon/ebay. Reviews say theyre a direct replacement for Perko
Remember one extra thing to check - are they sailboat compliant? https://www.dco.uscg.mil/Portals/9/DCO Documents/5p/CG-5PC/INV/Alerts/0219.pdf
Hmmmmmm... Good point, Davida... I'm sailing on an inland lake, rarely at night, and rarely heeling at night. We're lucky on full moon raft up evenings if there's enough wind to ghost along. If I'm out at night, I'm mostly motoring. But if I were on a bigger boat on bigger water... Well, I'll have to remember this should I ever upgrade!
