[Bene505]

I have to replace my bow light, or at least the lens anyway. So it's a good time to switch over to LED. After looking online for awhile I didn't see a single-unit (2 color) LED bow lights, only the single color versons. Anyone know a good place to get an LED bow light that has both Red and Green built-in?

For a 50 foot boat, I believe it's a 2 nm visibility requirement. That may have been the reason I couldn't find anything.

(I would also consider going with a brighter-than-required light, or 2 bow lights sticked immediately on top of eash other. I really want to be seen.)

 

[PBzeer]

Don't know if you have a masthead tricolor, but I pretty much only use my deck level nav lights when under power. So I didn't bother to switch to LEDs there. When I'm in open enough water to be sailing at night, I use the masthead light.

 

[sailingdog]

Bene—

Try this: LINK

 

[AboardIndigo]

Catalina Direct has introductory pricing on some new LED nav bulb replacements. You might be able to make something up at a price you like from what they have.

Catalina Direct: Bulb LED Upgrade For Red Green Navigation Light

 

[sck5]

I dont know. I am replacing my red/green this winter and didnt like the looks of the LED's I saw. They looked kind of pink and kind of dim to me. I dont want other boats to wonder what the hell that pink light is. I want them to KNOW they are looking at my boat. But it could be that the newer models are better - I just havent seen them yet.

 

[sck5]

another note - the white LED's looked fine to me so I AM using LED for the anchor light and will replace the stern light with LED later on - I am not against LED's generally but just didnt like the color on the red/greens (or should I call them "pink/lime")

 

[AdamLein]

Bene - could you post links for the single-color lights you found?

 

[Bene505]

Bene—

Try this: LINK

Thanks SD. I noticed the black ones are $70 and the white ones are $260. I got the black one. Here's the picture.

I'm looking to mount it on the vertical plate that is at the fore of my bow pulpit. If this works out, I may get another one to stack on top of this one.

I'll let everyone know how it turns out.

Regards

 

[artbyjody]

Note: LED navigation lights come in two different flavors and should be matched to the size of your boat. Less than 25 feet have one requirment and others an another.. Also, do a check to make sure they have been "endorsed" - or CG approved. There are quite a few products out for LED nav lights that kind of have mis-leading descriptions unless you read the fine print.

Other note:

If you are looking to replace standard bulbs with LED. Just go with white. The lens if a tri-color - will provide the color and you'll save about 20%. On top of that you'll get more power savings (LED are a power saver but white is least costly over the color LEDs power consumption by about 10%)... and you'll probably get a better resulting color.

For my Aqua Signal Tri-color I am using just white DR LED replacement LED bulbs which saved me about 40$ buying just the white ones (over the colored) and the perceived look is just fine...

BTW Dr LED has been active with the local boatshows and you can save some $$ when ordering just mentioning a boat show you went to...

 

[Bene505]

Thanks SD. I noticed the black ones are $70 and the white ones are $260. I got the black one. Here's the picture.

I'm looking to mount it on the vertical plate that is at the fore of my bow pulpit. If this works out, I may get another one to stack on top of this one.

I'll let everyone know how it turns out.

Regards

I've been looking at the LED lights some more and didn't find an LED (2 color) bow light that is designed for mounting on a vertical surface (bulkhead mount?). This is as far as I got, last time I did the research.

I'm still going to go with SD's (deck mount) recommendation. I'm thinking I can make a bracket that will hold it.

 

[Bene505]

Note: LED navigation lights come in two different flavors and should be matched to the size of your boat. Less than 25 feet have one requirment and others an another.. Also, do a check to make sure they have been "endorsed" - or CG approved. There are quite a few products out for LED nav lights that kind of have mis-leading descriptions unless you read the fine print.

Other note:

If you are looking to replace standard bulbs with LED. Just go with white. The lens if a tri-color - will provide the color and you'll save about 20%. On top of that you'll get more power savings (LED are a power saver but white is least costly over the color LEDs power consumption by about 10%)... and you'll probably get a better resulting color.

For my Aqua Signal Tri-color I am using just white DR LED replacement LED bulbs which saved me about 40$ buying just the white ones (over the colored) and the perceived look is just fine...

BTW Dr LED has been active with the local boatshows and you can save some $$ when ordering just mentioning a boat show you went to...

My bow light kept getting dunked and water got into it, causing it to fail. I'm looking to replace the whole thing anyway, ideally with something that can withstand getting dunked repeatedly. Thanks for the useful information.

 

[janders]

If you are looking to replace standard bulbs with LED. Just go with white. The lens if a tri-color - will provide the color and you'll save about 20%. On top of that you'll get more power savings (LED are a power saver but white is least costly over the color LEDs power consumption by about 10%)... and you'll probably get a better resulting color.

For my Aqua Signal Tri-color I am using just white DR LED replacement LED bulbs which saved me about 40$ buying just the white ones (over the colored) and the perceived look is just fine...

BTW Dr LED has been active with the local boatshows and you can save some $$ when ordering just mentioning a boat show you went to...

I'm reading lots of reports of people who did this very thing and ended up with pink and blue nav lights. All the recommendations I ran across while researching the same thing were pretty adamant about using red LED's port and green LED's starboard. YMMV.

We've got a new OrcaGreen anchor/tri-color LED showing up in the next week or so. Best part about those is that you can use one set of wires (+/-) to run both lights. Sweet.

Jason

 

[sailingdog]

Jody—

Be aware that the only Dr. LED replacement bulb that is currently USCG certified is their Aqua Signal 40 Anchor light replacement bulb.

Note: LED navigation lights come in two different flavors and should be matched to the size of your boat. Less than 25 feet have one requirment and others an another.. Also, do a check to make sure they have been "endorsed" - or CG approved. There are quite a few products out for LED nav lights that kind of have mis-leading descriptions unless you read the fine print.

Other note:

If you are looking to replace standard bulbs with LED. Just go with white. The lens if a tri-color - will provide the color and you'll save about 20%. On top of that you'll get more power savings (LED are a power saver but white is least costly over the color LEDs power consumption by about 10%)... and you'll probably get a better resulting color.

For my Aqua Signal Tri-color I am using just white DR LED replacement LED bulbs which saved me about 40$ buying just the white ones (over the colored) and the perceived look is just fine...

BTW Dr LED has been active with the local boatshows and you can save some $$ when ordering just mentioning a boat show you went to...

 

[Bene505]

I did some quick checking on the light spectrum of white LEDs. While I'm posting an early "find" and not necessarily the spectrum of the white LEDs that are for sale for Marine use, you can see from this chart that it would be pretty easy to imagine a replacement white LED that would not produce green light and would appear blue instead, when run through your existing green filter.

Green light has a wavelength of about 510 nm.
Red light has a wavelength of about 650 nm.

Jut because it looks white, doesn't mean there has to be a lot of green light being emitted.

Same goes for red filters making the light look pink instead. There's very little red being produced in the above chart.

 

[Bene505]

By comparison, an incandescent bulb has tons of green and red to work with, so using red or green filters would work well (as we know).

 

[Bene505]

All this has me thinking that maybe I ought to buy separate bow lights, using LEDs made specifically for Red and Green, individually. (Manufacturers make LEDs with certain colors using certain chemicals inside the LED.) It seems like the best way to get the brightness that I want. It would take a custom bracket.

 

[brak]

never mind, read the last post - looks like using "clear" LED lights with a filtering lense may not be a good idea. I'll wait and see how your project goes, then - hopefully you'll share your results with us.

 

[AdamLein]

Anybody know of good options for installing LED nav lights in the below-deck-line flush-mount positions? I.e. replacing these:

I've noticed most nav LEDs are way too big, so maybe I'm outta luck and should go with the sort of deck mount that you guys are talking about?

 

[labatt]

Janders - I'm interested in hearing about your OrcaGreen experiences... I'm thinking about buying the unit too. Right now we just have deck level bow/stern lights and a 2-wire anchor light at the masthead. The fact that you don't have to run a third wire up the mast for the OrcaGreen units looks intriguing...

 

[Bene505]

Bene - could you post links for the single-color lights you found?

Adam,

Didn't forget about your question. I looked on Google using the 3 search words: "LED navigation lights" (without the quotes). This led (no pun indended!) to some good hits. I also foraged around the Aqua Marine website. They have a series 31 (good to 1nm) and a series 32 (good to 2nm). The series 32 is at the link that Sailingdog posted.

I also googled for even brighter lights by googling: "LED navigation lights -2nm" (with no quotes). I didn't find any red or green high intensity lights that way, at least not in the time I devoted to it. I did find a 3nm white light though, I think from OrcaGreen, IIRC.

Regards