Make your own anchor light.

[William_H]

This kind of thing might be usefull. 30cm LED Strip Light for Car Caravan Boat SWB Van White Blue Red Green Amber 12V | eBay
They have resistor current limiting so not sophisticated but OK if mostly used with engine not charging. Glue on back of strip is not much good. Connecting wires are prety flimsy. Could be mounted inside a tiny jar or on the outside of a pole. ol'will

 

[wonkywinch]

I like TC's version although it would make me nervous hanging half a pint of flammable liquid and a flame above a teak or white plastic deck then sleeping underneath it!

 

[GHA]

I like TC's version although it would make me nervous hanging half a pint of flammable liquid and a flame above a teak or white plastic deck then sleeping underneath it!

I use the best of both worlds, constant current LEDs inside what was an unreliable oil lamp. Fresnel lens makes it even brighter and looks a bit more boaty.

 

[GHA]

I think my post can't have been very clear.

I can work out that swapping white LEDs to red ones will change it from a white light to a red one. That doesn't require any changes to the circuit board.

What I am after is an annular light; a doughnut shaped one; one with a hole in the middle through which I can thrust a 25mm alloy pole.
That way, I can have a very simple and strong tube with all-round LED lights mounted integrally around the pole.

GHA's design, as it stands, is similar to the commercial all-round lights I have seen, and would require mounting on a bracket offset from the pole. More complex, heavier and with greater windage than what I have in mind for this specific application.

So I'd need to modify the circuit board so there's nothing in the middle (which might put the power transistor a little close to the LEDs, thermally?) and ideally with the middle already punched out. Also look for a short length of tube with an ID slightly greater than the OD of the pole. And sort out how to manage the power connections. But GHA's done the hard work.

Here's my CAD (crap-awful-doodle) of the sort of thing I mean (not to any kind of scale!):
View attachment 112327

Should be possible, 25mm circular gap in the middle for a hole though 50mm OD might be a bit tight, maybe 60mm would be better. JLCPCB do up to 100mm x 100mm boards before price starts to go up. Placing the leds on easyeda did take a little while, I drew it in cad then imported an image into easyeda as a template. Then used autorouting and played around with the tracks a bit afterwards. also 15 cree 503 LED are probably fine, Mk1 has 5 strings of 3 instead of 8 and is as bright as any other light in the anchorage.

This one was before discovering the wonderful jlcpcb ?

What next I wonder ?

 

[GHA]

"masthead just cos you should"

No idea why “you should” - my anchor light is just above the ball, hoisted by the spinnaker halyard with the wire running down the middle of the braided downhaul. It also looks very similar to yours - it’s a (no longer available) Bebi, which I believe was the inspiration ?

(Mine does also have a daylight sensor built in, which I find useful. I switch on the power to it as soon as I anchor in the afternoon, and ignore it until the morning.)

You should cos the universe is ultimately unpredictable, cruising ten times worse and one day I'll be glad it's there.
The normal low one will be switched on at night through the load circuit of a victron smartsolar, that way will be able to keep an eye on the current draw as well for a heads up should it ever start to fail, unlikely though that is. ?