Sailboat Xmas Lights?

[JedNeck]

I would like to put some Christmas lights on Makai, my Cal21. I imagine this has been done before. I was hoping to run them on the 12V house power.

The boat lives at the dock in my backyard. So it can be plugged into 120v except while underway.

Any ideas? Pics? Brands/types of lights?

[delite]

You may want to look at something like these. They run a 3 AA batteries
Battery Operated Lights Multi Green Wire - Novelty Lights Inc

I dont know that there is a direct plug in for a 12 volt system, I suspect you need to use an inverter and then plug in the LED light transformer to use you 12 volt system

[jimrafford]

Search ebay for 12v led rope lights. I picked some up this past summer.
Jim

[CorvetteGuy]

Buy yourself a 300 watt inverter and hook it up to the 12v system on your boat then you can run just about any type of lights, new LED lights use about 2 to 4 watts per length. Good luck and Merry Sailing

[KnottyGurl]

Originally Posted by CorvetteGuy

Buy yourself a 300 watt inverter and hook it up to the 12v system on your boat then you can run just about any type of lights, new LED lights use about 2 to 4 watts per length. Good luck and Merry Sailing

This is what we did, grabbed some solid colour sets, 2 blue 2 red 2 green and string them together, the box says 30 or 40 lines can be attached and run them off the inverter we have 1100 watt at the moment but uses much less then 2 - 4 watts all totaled

[Bene505]

For the sailboat, I use an inverter and power the standard mini lights that are everywhere and cheap.

For the car, I rewired those standard 120v mini lights into 12v lights.

How to rewire? The 100 light sets are really a 2 step ladder configuration:

|................................................. ............................|
|................................................. ............................|
|................................................. ............................|
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
|................................................. ............................|
|................................................. ............................|
|................................................. ............................|
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
|................................................. ............................|
|................................................. ............................|
|................................................. ............................|

where "o" is a light with short wires between them, and "|" is a power wire. ("." is nothing, multiple spaces don't show up well on forums/web pages.) It does't look like this normally because one side of the ladder is shifted up dramatically, so it looks like there are 3 wires.

By connecting every 5 lights to the opposite side of the ladder, you make a 12v set. To do this, after every 5 lights, carefully strip a bare spot on the wire, carefully strip a bare spot on the latter vertical, twist the bare spots around each other, and wrap with electrical tape. Be careful when stripping a bare spot on the wires; do not actually cut any wires.

Make sure you cut the 120v plug/socket off the ends, first thing, so you don't mistake this set for a house set.

You may have to cut that last series of 5 lights to connect them to the opposite ladder, to finish off the process. Or keep them as dead lights, I don't recall what I did; it's been awhile.

Conceptually, you want it to look like this (remember there are no long wires, I'm just showing how they are twisted together):

|................................................. ............................|
|.......--------------------------------------------------|
|.......|................|...............|........ ......|.............|.....|
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
|................|...............|................ |............|............|
|-----------------------------------------------...........|
|................................................. ............................|
|................................................. ............................|
|.......--------------------------------------------------|
|.......|................|...............|........ ......|.............|.....|
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
|................|...............|................ |............|............|
|-----------------------------------------------...........|
|................................................. ............................|

Note the right side lights need to be connected to the opposite rung in 2 places) to make those lights work. Or you could cut them out of the circuit altogether (much easier).

The new string of lights will have almost all the length of the original lights, and you can't tell the difference between then, the modifications are that good (and simple).

Straightening out the verticals on the ladder, it looks like this.

|.....|
ooooo
|.....|
ooooo
|.....|
ooooo
|.....|
ooooo
|.....|
ooooo
|.....|
ooooo
|.....|
ooooo
|.....|
ooooo
|.....|
ooooo
|.....|
ooooo
|.....|
ooooo
|.....|
ooooo
|.....|
ooooo
|.....|
ooooo
|.....|
ooooo
|.....|
ooooo
|.....|
ooooo
|.....|
ooooo
|.....|
ooooo
|.....|
ooooo
|.....|

Then connect to 12v. I found no problem using this at charging voltages (13+ volts) versus actual 12v battery voltages. If anything, I found them to be a bit dim/yellow at lower voltages. Next time I do this, I may experiment with using 4 lights on each "step" of the ladder instead of 5. The lights may not last longer, but they will be brighter.

Regards,
Brad

[delite]

Bene505 why wouldnt you just get an inverter to plug into your cars cigarette lighter rather than spending hours rewiring the lights?

[Bene505]

Originally Posted by delite

Bene505 why wouldnt you just get an inverter to plug into your cars cigarette lighter rather than spending hours rewiring the lights?

It took about 90 minutes to do the whole 100 light strand. I did it sitting in front of the fireplace in the living room. That's the downside.

On the upside: I wired it directly into my parking lights. So when the parking lights (or headlights) are on, the Christmas lights are on. Easy as pie. No new fuses are needed, since it's low enough amps to share the existing fuse.

There was no good way to get the inverter to switch-on automatically. (I tried the manual, "allegator clips to the battery" method. It was a pain-in-the-butt to turn the lights on and off, especially for short (typical) trips.

Yes, I could use a 12 volt relay to energize the inverter. It would have to be higher amperage to function with the large start-up current.

For those on a sailboat, the rewire method will use less amps than using an inverter.

Regards,
Brad

[blt2ski]

An Issue with using the cig lighter inverter, is many wires are on the small side leading to the lighter, which may be too small for the power draw. So a hard wired inverter "might" be better depending upon how many lights one is powering up.

I've got planned some 1800-2000 LED mostly with about 500 st lights on my boat. A cig lighter inverter has the power, but knowing how big the feed wire is, no thank you! right now I run it all on a 15amp circuit at the dock. My plan is to get a 600-1000wt inverter and hard wire it with built in GFI plugs. This is the hard part finding with smaller inverters.

Another option would be a small genset if motoring about!

Marty

ps
Do not forget pics when all done!

[JedNeck]

The generator idea is out because I motor on a big electric outboard and deep cycle battery. My gas generator would take up half the cockpit and I'm afraid the noise would take away from the sailing mystic.
The rewire solution sounds like a fun little project to me...and I'm not afraid to try it and may if I get bored.

...but

I will want to be duel-use so I can plug it in to the dock power at home but still be lit on an evening cruise. So the inverter idea is probably the winner. I have a small 250w inverter that will work fine for this. Besides in all honesty even on a good week she lives at the dock the majority of the time.