Converting to LED ...

[PaulRainbow]

Now you mention it maybe I should try one with a 12V supply and see if it's better

Won't hurt to try. I've fitted DC-DC converters to those LED strips on a roll, where high battery charging voltages made them very bright and they got hot, Set the voltage to just under 12v and they ran cool and were a much better brightness.

 

[Slowboat35]

The only downside to LED conversion is the brightness. Our ceiling lights on a Jeanneau have been replaced with the lowest wattage LEDs I could find and it's like living on the surface of the Sun! I'm actually planning to fit a lamp just so we can have some dimmer lighting!

Curious! This is the total diametric opposite of my experience, I'm simply astonished to read this and wonder how it can possibly be.
I replaced the 20W G4 halogen bulbs in my saloon/cabin bulkhead-mounted brass reading lights with LEDs . The old halogen lights were OK for reading - none too bright but acceptable as long as one's eyes weren't very tired. I have not found an LED to even approach them for brightness and the best are quite inadequate for reading at any time. Sure, they are bright as hell to look at - but light density on the page - which is what brightness is all about - hopeless. LEDs in the 6inch circular frosted deckhead fittings are just about OK but not obviously brighter than the festoon bulbs they replaced but absolutely fine.
Nav lights and associated power consumption? Off the scale wonderful!

Two real LED success stories recently though;

A beefy, beautifully made and stylish spring-clamp mounted flexible reading/work light that will clamp firmly to a sprayhood tube, bulkhead, raised edge/fiddle, side-locker aperture etc and stay there... Super-bright but dimmable in several stages + warm/tepid/cold colours. USB powered. Superb. The clamp is a full-force fistfull of grip. Really impressive. (This item stands 12in high or so - it is quite substantial. It'll easily light up the whole coskpit)
LED Desk Clip Lamp, KEEHOM 7W USB Desk Lamp with Clamp 3 Lighting Modes and 10 Brightness Levels Adjustable Flexible Neck Fits Reading Studying Working with Eye Protection and Energy Saving : Amazon.co.uk: Lighting

Superb neat and compact 14inch "flourescent strip" type LED lamp, solid and heavily made (feels engineered), battery powered or USB, variable brightness, magnetic attachement. What I've been searching for for years as a cockpit area light for night entertaining etc and a seriously useful worklght too. Absolutely the mutt's nuts.
LETOUR LED Tube Magnetic Work Light Bar 120W 6000Lumens 5 Dimmable Levels Camping Lantern USB Rechargeable Portable Lights Endurance for 80Hours (LT-LTK120 120Watts) : Amazon.co.uk: Lighting

Still looking for decent light-output G4s though, but with the clamp-on flexible light that necessity is now rather less .

Otherwise, at anchor or night-sailing I reckon LEDs throughout are the equivalent of trebling the size of your battery bank. The only conventional light I have left is the engine-bay flourescent which is used so seldom it hardly matters.

imho LEDs are an absolute no-brainer.

 

[septiclecky]

LED Lighthouse

I would look at fitting an LED Dimmer ...

You would need to find out if the LED lamp is a dimmable type not all LED lamps are dimmable unlike tungsten/halogen lamps

 

[[70521]]

The only downside to LED conversion is the brightness. Our ceiling lights on a Jeanneau have been replaced with the lowest wattage LEDs I could find and it's like living on the surface of the Sun! I'm actually planning to fit a lamp just so we can have some dimmer lighting!

It's brilliant, no more groping around in the semi-darkness when trying to find an odd sock before going up for the 0300 watch.

 

[adwuk]

Just replaced the last two bulbs on our boat with LED - the steaming (BAY15D) and deck lights (H3). The range of bulbs designed for a specific job (e.g. red/green sectored nav lights, or daylight sensor anchor lights) is very impressive these days - I have used boatlamps.co.uk for most of them (no connection).

 

[cherod]

horrible cold sterile light .

 

[lustyd]

I replaced the 20W G4 halogen bulbs in my saloon/cabin bulkhead-mounted brass reading lights with LEDs . The old halogen lights were OK for reading - none too bright but acceptable as long as one's eyes weren't very tired. I have not found an LED to even approach them for brightness

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07GTHFTRQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

These are the G4's I used for the main lights. Ridiculously bright. If you're anywhere near Gosport you can pop over and I'll give you one of my spares to try out

 

[William_H]

Yes LED replaced incandescent log ago on the little boat mostly because the wiring and almps have been replaced many times due to age and corrosion. I have always gone for cheap Chinese Ebay where possible soldered in. I bought proper LED port and stbd lights for cabin side but this 10pcs High Power LED Lamp Light COB SMD Bulb Chip DIY 10W 20W 50W 100W 12V-36V | eBay makes a great stern light. In fact I fitted a resistor in series to reduce current drain.
All runs from about 10AH NiCad battery and 5w solar charger. ol'will

 

[Iliade]

Just sellotape sweet wrappers over the overly bright lights. Or car window film. Or chintz! Even Contravision, then you could disguise the lamps as something else...

Some sort of occulting circuit is probably the real way to go, you know, the sort of thing where it spells out your boat's name if you glance at it.

 

[penfold]

horrible cold sterile light .

Only if you buy cold white lamps; buy warm white and it's like you've still got glowing bits of wire in a glass envelope, but without the current draw.

 

[oldgit]

....................and lot less heat, no more " ouch" moments when accidently touching red metal shades.

 

[Daydream believer]

Impressive! Do you have a mushroom?

More like "magic mushrooms"

 

[Moodysailor]

Not unusually, we're another one with a boat from the 70's that is doing this
Have so far replaced navigation light bulbs, added dimmable & colour changeable remote strip lighting to the saloon (high and low level), and replaced all galley lighting with LED as part of a galley refit.
We used one of the newer COB strip lights for the galley and are really impressed - no more dark corners, and the continuous strip of light looks much nicer than the SMD type LED strips in our opinion.
We will probably use dimmable COB strips in the cabins, but are waiting for an RGB/WW to come out - this is what we used in the saloon and is great as you have the option for red at night, white for reading, dimmed for TV/relaxing, or any other colour or pattern for when the party starts
We went with 4500K white for the galley, 3000K for the saloon and will use the same for the cabins. I'll probably go with 6000K in the engine room. I mistakenly bought some 6000K light for our kitchen last year so I know they will be laboratory white!!

 

[Hoolie]

You would need to find out if the LED lamp is a dimmable type not all LED lamps are dimmable unlike tungsten/halogen lamps

I think you're confusing mains powered LEDs with the low voltage ones we have on board.

I have a couple of strips of warm white 12v LEDs along the coach rails each side of the main cabin. They are supplied via a remote control dimmer and can be dimmed right down. It is certainly much better to be able to set a comfortable and atmospheric level of lighting.

 

[SailingDog]

If a lamp fails then LED a natural replacement, replacing 20+ bulbs for the battery saving is questionable unless you are undertaking extended open water passages, Marina hopping in day light hours doesn't make economic sense IMO.

 

[anoccasionalyachtsman]

If a lamp fails then LED a natural replacement, replacing 20+ bulbs for the battery saving is questionable unless you are undertaking extended open water passages, Marina hopping in day light hours doesn't make economic sense IMO.

Economic sense? Boat?

 

[Stemar]

Sorting out the lighting isn't the first thing on Jazzcat's to do list - that place is taken by replacing the 37 year old standing and running rigging, but it's definitely up there. Where it makes sense, I'll just replace the bulbs with LEDs, but I'm seriously considering LED strips for the galley and the other hull, which will mainly be nav station/workshop. The hope is that a metre or so of 9w per metre strip will provide good lighting for working, and double as general lighting for the saloon, with spots or downlighters for reading.

As for nav lights, I'm not bothered about LEDs for the deck flood/steaming light, as the flood won't be on for long, and the steaming light will only be used with the engine running. If I can get away with just fitting bulbs, I will, but the last time I tried to change a bulb, the light fitting disintegrated, so I got LED lights. Most I found were silly money "Marine quality, Sir", but these were £24 a pair. Still a nice little earner for someone, but a helluva lot better than the couple of hundred some places want.

I've decided that, at least to start with, I won't bother with masthead lights. She's a motorsailer, so much of the time on passage we'll have an engine running, and I'll make up an LED anchor light to hang from the genny sheets

 

[lustyd]

replacing 20+ bulbs for the battery saving is questionable

just for the 8 in my saloon the old bulbs were 20W each or 160 total. That's 13A at 12V so just 10 hours use with the normal setup of a couple of 110AH AGMs. At the end of the season that's probably one night at anchor given the requirement for the anchor light as well. The LED bulbs I replaced them with are 3W or less so maximum 24W or 2A. That's over 50 hours on the same battery bank or maybe a week at anchor.

It cost about a tenner for the ones I fitted, although I did go for big packs so I think I actually spent £30 and have a lot of spares.

 

[Moodysailor]

If a lamp fails then LED a natural replacement, replacing 20+ bulbs for the battery saving is questionable unless you are undertaking extended open water passages, Marina hopping in day light hours doesn't make economic sense IMO.

If you look at it from a purely commercial perspective then not a lot on a boat makes sense.

Outside our need (our boat is from the early 70's so was due some upgrades in this area), we also looked at it differently. If you are swapping filament bulbs for LED then you will get some advantages - better light is arguable (and sometimes subjective), reduced power consumption (whether in marina or not is good as it reduces overall load and cycling on the batteries), and reduced heat.

We wanted to use the LED's to enhance our lighting - in our example we had one central 'main' light in our saloon, and two reading lamps. Now we have led strips running full length either side of the saloon, plus a low level strip under the seats. These are all on different circuits, remote controlled and dimmable. We have a deck saloon, the high level lights are behind coamings that diffuse the light inboard but also let it light up the side decks if we have the curtains open. So we gained a ton more useful interior lighting that can be adjusted to suit our needs, it also can be switched to red for night use, can be used to light up the side decks at night, and if we really wanted could be set to a colour to either a) help us identify our boat in an anchorage or b) provide rudimentary emergency navigation lights.

And the whole lot cost around £50 - a lot cheaper than the mainsheet block I just bought....

 

[Moodysailor]

Sorting out the lighting isn't the first thing on Jazzcat's to do list - that place is taken by replacing the 37 year old standing and running rigging, but it's definitely up there. Where it makes sense, I'll just replace the bulbs with LEDs, but I'm seriously considering LED strips for the galley and the other hull, which will mainly be nav station/workshop. The hope is that a metre or so of 9w per metre strip will provide good lighting for working, and double as general lighting for the saloon, with spots or downlighters for reading.

As for nav lights, I'm not bothered about LEDs for the deck flood/steaming light, as the flood won't be on for long, and the steaming light will only be used with the engine running. If I can get away with just fitting bulbs, I will, but the last time I tried to change a bulb, the light fitting disintegrated, so I got LED lights. Most I found were silly money "Marine quality, Sir", but these were £24 a pair. Still a nice little earner for someone, but a helluva lot better than the couple of hundred some places want.

I've decided that, at least to start with, I won't bother with masthead lights. She's a motorsailer, so much of the time on passage we'll have an engine running, and I'll make up an LED anchor light to hang from the genny sheets

This certainly isn't the cheapest thing I've ever bought, but my gosh is it useful. Works as a light for our dinghy, anchor light, area light and a battery backup emergency nav light. It's really small, takes rechargeable or conventional batteries. The med setting is fine for most anchorages, but with the rechargeable fitted, there should be enough burn time to last through the night on all but the bleakest days...

Having bought one, I'd happily recommend to others.

Fenix CL09