Hurricane Lamp as Anchor Light?

CaptainBob

CaptainBob

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I'm really keen not to use my batteries for anything as my old Volvo sometimes takes a bit of starting in the morning and I want all the oomph I can possibly muster...

So I've bought a lovely Vapalux M320 as a light/cabin heater/anchor light. It's fantastic, but has a major flaw when being used as an anchor light - you have to wake up every couple of hours and pump it up again!

I was wondering about the possibility of getting a hurricane lamp and using one of those instead. I've seen that some of the online chandlers sell brass ones for about £30 - and www.hurricanelamps.co.uk sells some "Elite" ones which look very nice. But are they going to be bright enough. After all, they're just glorified candles really.

Thanks!
 
I had one and it used to blow out quite often but I slept well THINKING it was alight so it still did the job. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Have you thought of one of the garden solar lights?
 
My hurricane lamp blows out in much more than a force 0. Pretty dim anyway. It is only one of the little ones, maybe a full sized one will be better.

I bought an LED camping lantern from Maplin last year. Lovely and bright but draws about ¼amp from 4 AA batteries so needs new set each night! Thinking of using rechargeables and recharging them from the main battery (got the charger to recharge my camera batteries)

BUT looked at a Draper LED lantern in SeaTeach's shop the other day. That's got about 17 LEDs that shine up from the base onto a conical reflector and it runs on a set of C cells. . They said it had been siting on the counter for customers to play with for over a year and still had the original batteries in it.
It could be an answer. Otherwise I reckon its the Triton LED light on the main battery.
 
[ QUOTE ]
I'm really keen not to use my batteries for anything as my old Volvo sometimes takes a bit of starting in the morning and I want all the oomph I can possibly muster...

So I've bought a lovely Vapalux M320 as a light/cabin heater/anchor light. It's fantastic, but has a major flaw when being used as an anchor light - you have to wake up every couple of hours and pump it up again!

I was wondering about the possibility of getting a hurricane lamp and using one of those instead. I've seen that some of the online chandlers sell brass ones for about £30 - and www.hurricanelamps.co.uk sells some "Elite" ones which look very nice. But are they going to be bright enough. After all, they're just glorified candles really.

Thanks!

[/ QUOTE ]

Why not get a proper oil fired copper anchor light, complete with dioptic lense?......will burn for eight hours or more, and can be seen at about 3-5 miles, depending on the size of the wick.
 
IMHO the best solution for anchoring is a LED camping lantern tied between the foresail sheets. Mine is very bright, visible through 360 degrees, waterproof and works for 2 nights off 3 rechargeable AA batteries. Cost £8.
 
[ QUOTE ]

Why not get a proper oil fired copper anchor light, complete with dioptic lense?......will burn for eight hours or more, and can be seen at about 3-5 miles, depending on the size of the wick.

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As said above, I may be pointing out the obvious here but these seem to be your best bet and they are on the origional site:
http://www.hurricanelamps.co.uk/pressure_lamps.htm
 
Pressure ones wont last the night, and cheap ones either leak or blow out.

The favoured brand for me is the Feuer Hand, used by German military.
if you can get a British Army one they work well too.

Use good quality lamp oil (kero) too.

Mine lasts all night on one filling, and hasnt gone out except when I used cheap oil in it.
Note that oil is hygroscopic and soaks up water, so old stuff sputters and doesnt burn well, and uses up the wick.
 
Ditto that. Proper anchor lights can be bought new from Den Haan Rotterdam, of via Classic Marine or Daveys. You can also get really good ones off ebay. The full dioptric lens is worth having, but it also pays to have a small lamp glass on the wick - this aids burning and you get a brighter flame with less sooting. Try and avoid the repro ones- they look good on the outside but have poor tank and wick arrangements. If you really want a good one they cost about £100+ so try ebay first.
 
If you only need an anchor light occasionally then you don't want to invest in the traditional copper oil lamp.
If you feel like fiddling then LEDs from electronics shop are in the order of 80p each and 4 in series will draw 50 milliamps from a 12v battery using a 100 ohm series resistor. Get the data sheet for the LED and using a multimeter adjust the resistor value to get the correct current. Buy the highest brightness white LEDs you can get (but not those super bright high current ones) you want the type used in small flashlights.
If you think 50 milliamps is too much from your main battery then use a small SLA battery (or one of those emergency start power packs or even AA rechageables.
The 4 LEDs should be mounted facing each direction of azimuth. If you have doubts about the visibility (coverage of all directions) then add another 4 to fill the gaps in between to make 8 points of the compass. However with natural movement of the boat and changing angle of approach of another boat 4 should do the job.
 
IMG_5222a.jpg

I bought it on e-bay from
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?V...E:X:AAQ:GB:1123
The actual price with postage was £6.84 with Buy it now.
I did 2 small mods. I got a cycle tube and cut 2 rings. These slide over the 2 joins in the plastic casing and ensure that it is totally waterproof rather than weatherproof.
 
Thats looks pretty neat. What i did find though with 12 LED lanterns was that they are rather directional, giving a very bright light in four directions. NSE&W as it were and very less bright in between. I guess if they move about a bit that gives them a bit of a twinkling effect.
 
Thanks for the link. I have just ordered an Amazon lamp to replace the Chinese-made brass hurry lamp I bought from a chandler.
The wick trimmer failed on its first use... luckily the one from an old rusty army lamp fitted - just but in anything over a F4 the it blew out.
It looks the part but is totally impractical.
 
I've been using one of those cheapy chinese ones, very rusty, for years, and it never goes out. It will go a long winter night on a fill-up, several summer nights, it reasobaly visible and quite charming. The only fiddle is occasionally removing ad cleaning the glass, about twice a year.

Regards, Mudhook.
 
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It has a sort of Fresnel lens

[/ QUOTE ] It sounds more and more like the sort of thing I want. I think I'll take the details into our local camping centre and see if they can help. I'd like to see before I buy (not that it helped me with the Maplin one .. could not have switched brain on that day)
 
The Feuer hand is a good lantern,ive use a large yellow one for years but always worried about haveing a lantern with one liter of parrafin tied above the deck.

I bought a proper anchor light in brass with dioptic lense that has a hard to light parrafin lamp which lasts the night with about half a gill of parrafin and gives a great light

They cost me about £50!!!But worth it
 
Have you looked at the Kampa web site - on box. They have several different models. I wanted one with rechargeable AA batteries as my hand held GPS, LW radio, portable TV, etc etc all use AA batteries and the new ones are 2.7Ah and last a long time.
 
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