So Dauntless now has one halogen spot (Hella) and two fog lights (Chinese), with two switches near my right hand below the instrument cluster, going through the switch/breaker in the pilot house panel.
Some details on the lights. The Chinese LED’s are advertised as available in 30 or 60 degree light spread, but I think those numbers looked good to the manufacturer and have no basis in reality.
But then that’s what I expected. I actually bought one of each and it looks like the one that is supposed to be 60° had something sprayed on the inside of the lens (to call it a lens is being very generous). In any case, both are very bright (even brighter than expected) and very broad (as expected).
The Hella is exactly as advertised. Even on Amazon, they give a great diagram of the light pattern for each type of light, from spot to driving to euro to fog. I actually got the driving versus the spot, as I can’t see Dauntless going 100 mph (yes, here I do use statute miles, why, because we are on land and our speed is measured in mph), so I don’t really need to see 900 meters down range, 500m will do quite nicely and gives me a bit of a broader beam to catch something let’s say at 200m that my Chinese lights may miss.
And no, I won’t have them on when other boats are around.
For some reason I seem to find myself traveling sometimes for days without seeing other boats.
Like when we went to Andros Island and then decided to leave at 10:00 p.m. as I realized what an untenable position I had put us in
. OK details to follow in tomorrow’s posting.
Pictures are posted on my blog
Light Her Up Boys | DauntlessAtSea