Masthead Tri-colour advice

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mattonthesea

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The mast is coming down for replacement of several things and fitting a tri-colour. (how did I not notice there weren't one when I bought the boat?)

I need something suitable for blue water cruising. My thoughts so far are LED Tri and anchor combined

but what after that? The Super Nova seems quite a good deal. Is it?
Do white LEDs work well with colour filters or should I get a dedicated tri LED?

When the mast is down is it easy to remove and mouse wires through it or is there some obstructive device placed just out of arms reach?

Anything more I should think of?

Thanks in advance
 
We fitted an Aquasignal combined LED tricolour and anchor light 5 years ago and it's working well.

One irritation was that the way to swap between the two was to reverse the polarity which can't be done by a standard switch panel with a switch on one side and a common negative. So we have a reversing switch by the mast.

And apart from convention the anchor light is pointless as we known from anchoring many nights and avoiding unlit hulls as the light up in the sky gives no indication of distance.
 
I have the nasa supernova which seems OK. Didn't go for the combined all round white, but kind of regretting it now - not that it would get used much as an anchor light. Down low is so much better for those IMHO.
Ideally for blue water I'd like masthead LED tricolour, separate masthead LED white, LED deck nav lights . Then several weeks out there's a fair chance that at least one of those options should still work without trashing the batteries ;)

Got one of those so far....

Drifting a little, I really doubt way offshore nav lights will ever play much of a part when if comes to ships not hitting you, radar & AIS is where it's at for that.
 
Like Rupert, I'm no fan of masthead anchor lights - they're out of sight and they don't show where the boat is. Anchor lights belong ten feet or so above the foredeck, plugged into a deck socket, and including a bit of downwards light spread.

Tricolours were essential in the days when we made light as a byproduct of heating up a coil of wire to near melting point, and didn't want any more such coils eating amps than strictly necessary. With LEDs, multiple deck-level lights are less of a problem and a tricolour is less necessary, but it doesn't hurt to have the option.

Ideally your mast will have one or more wiring channels separate from the main space that the halyards run through, keeping the cables safe from chafe. They could be either full or non-existent on your particular profile though. There's unlikely to be an "obstructive device" in the way, but getting a cable in without an old one to pull it through or gravity to pull a weight down could be a faff. How much of one depends on whether you have a nice clear channel to push a fish tape down, or whether you have to worry about accidentally wrapping the cable around a moving halyard.

Since you're starting from scratch I'd suggest getting a dedicated LED light, rather than putting an LED bulb in a housing. Unfortunately I can't recommend one as the unit I have is no longer made (and was a retro-fit into an existing housing anyway).

Pete
 
RupertW said:
We fitted an Aquasignal combined LED tricolour and anchor light 5 years ago and it's working well.

One irritation was that the way to swap between the two was to reverse the polarity which can't be done by a standard switch panel with a switch on one side and a common negative. So we have a reversing switch by the mast.
Click to expand...

I guess that inconvenience is caused not by the light itself, but rather by the choice of using three-core rather than four-core cable (or 2 x twin-core)?
 
I have a lopolite tri-white. I got good service but were I to replace it , I'd definitely go for a simple tricolour with a deck plug and a suspended anchor light, see prv's comment above.
 
Fitted a NASA Supernova combined tri and anchor light in early 2012 on our old boat and was very happy with it. It was very bright, drew very little current and was still working well when the boat was sold last year. They also have the issue that you reverse polarity to go from one light to the other, but are supplied with a rotary switch which does the business. My biggest gripe was it was supplied with around 18" of cable, and therefore needed connecting at the top of the mast. I soldered, and waterproofed with glue filled heat shrink, but would have happily paid extra for one with ~15 m of cable, so I could do the join inside.
 
BabaYaga said:
I guess that inconvenience is caused not by the light itself, but rather by the choice of using three-core rather than four-core cable (or 2 x twin-core)?
Click to expand...

If you mean the boat wiring there is a common single core negative with spurs all over the boat with switched single core positive going to every device or light, so polarity reversing can only be done where negative and positive meet the two single core wires coming from the device
 
RupertW said:
If you mean the boat wiring there is a common single core negative with spurs all over the boat with switched single core positive going to every device or light, so polarity reversing can only be done where negative and positive meet the two single core wires coming from the device
Click to expand...

My point was that the Aquasignal LED light (series 34) comes with a four way connector block in the quicfit base, of which three are used (two positive and one negative) and no cable. So whether reversed polarity is used or not for operating the light must be up to the boat owner/installer.
However, I mixed up the preconditions in my post. A three core cable up the mast is sufficient to operate the anchor light and tricolour light independently. If the unit is connected only by a two core cable up the mast I believe it can still be operated by switching polarity. But this is not intrinsic to the light itself.
 
Another vote for the 34.

From what I can tell, the light distribution in the vertical plane is better than many other LED lights, meaning it will more likely still be bright when the yacht is well heeled.
 
BabaYaga said:
My point was that the Aquasignal LED light (series 34) comes with a four way connector block in the quicfit base, of which three are used (two positive and one negative) and no cable. So whether reversed polarity is used or not for operating the light must be up to the boat owner/installer.
However, I mixed up the preconditions in my post. A three core cable up the mast is sufficient to operate the anchor light and tricolour light independently. If the unit is connected only by a two core cable up the mast I believe it can still be operated by switching polarity. But this is not intrinsic to the light itself.
Click to expand...

You are right. I was mistaken in the model I have - I've found the manual and it's a NASA supernova which simply has a red and black wire coming out of it and relies on reversing polarity only.
 
Thanks all

It's interesting to hear your views on anchor lights. I have always used a low one suspended from the boom or backstay. It doubles up as a cockpit light. The only reason I thought of getting a combined was because everyone else has one. Perhaps I won't now :)
 
Matt,

(I read your book BTW and loved it!)

In your case, a masthead tricolour light is a solution without a problem. They were the concession made to smallish (<20m) vessels such as yours and mine to avoid us having to carry battery power for three (R, G, Wh) separate tungsten navigation lamps. We could instead run a single lamp at the masthead which, being unobstructed by the rest of the vessel, could just use three filters in order to appear R, G or Wh depending on the viewer's angle on the boat.

It was never ideal, because having your boat's nav lights suspended in the sky makes it hard to range-find at night, which is precisely what you want other vessels to be able to do when you're near! It does have the benefit in extremely bad weather of avoiding deck-mounted nav lights bobbing below the waves when viewed from other small vessels - but even that's not a problem when viewed from the deck of a ship.

These days, though, LED lamps are available and consume almost no power. So firstly you can run deck-mounted nav lights with much lower current consumption than even a single masthead tungsten bulb. And secondly, dismasting gives you the chance to replace your mooring (anchor) light with an LED all-round as well, further reducing your battery drain.

The other problem with masthead tricolours is that there's no way to signal that you're motoring. Setting your steaming light below your tricolour makes you a fishing vessel when viewed from your port side (red over white) and a trawler when viewed from starboard (green over white).

Yes, when the mast's down it's really easy to feed cable from one end to the other. You may have to mouse it by attaching string to an existing wire at the base, pulling that back through the mast to the head, attaching a new cable to both and pulling them both back down the mast with the string. If you did the above, you wouldn't need any more cable anyway.
 
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BelleSerene said:
The other problem with masthead tricolours is that there's no way to signal that you're motoring.
Click to expand...

Hence why they're only allowed to be used under sail - but unless you're a tiny boat with a hand-start outboard, when motoring you'll have electrical power available so the reason for the tricolour's existence doesn't apply.

BelleSerene said:
dismasting gives you the chance to replace your mooring (anchor) light with an LED all-round as well, further reducing your battery drain.
Click to expand...

But why would you want to do that when they have all the same problems you described for tricolours, but worse? Vessels manoeuvre closer together in anchorages than they (hopefully) do under way, so the difficulty of relating the boat to the disembodied light in the sky (or even noticing the light in the first place) is more serious. Anchorages are relatively calm so the "seeing it over the waves" benefit doesn't apply. The only point in favour of a masthead anchor light is the small convenience of flicking a switch versus fetching and rigging a portable light - and if you're doing things properly you'll be rigging an anchor ball anyway and the light can be integrated with that so that the additional effort is limited to inserting a plug to power it.

Pete
 
as the mast is coming down anyway, the relatively small expense of a supanova tri light is ok for me. Hope the wiring replacement works though! One of the reasons is that the new LED stern light reflects off the life raft cradle and blinds anyone looking backwards :-)

Yes I know I could changed that but when I come to sell it may just be a an anti-swaying thing for a potential buyer. "What, no tri-light? Not buying that!)

Mast down on Friday
 
prv said:
Hence why they're only allowed to be used under sail - but unless you're a tiny boat with a hand-start outboard, when motoring you'll have electrical power available so the reason for the tricolour's existence doesn't apply.



But why would you want to do that when they have all the same problems you described for tricolours, but worse? Vessels manoeuvre closer together in anchorages than they (hopefully) do under way, so the difficulty of relating the boat to the disembodied light in the sky (or even noticing the light in the first place) is more serious. Anchorages are relatively calm so the "seeing it over the waves" benefit doesn't apply. The only point in favour of a masthead anchor light is the small convenience of flicking a switch versus fetching and rigging a portable light - and if you're doing things properly you'll be rigging an anchor ball anyway and the light can be integrated with that so that the additional effort is limited to inserting a plug to power it.

Pete
Click to expand...

I agree with everything except your solution which seems very cumbersome compared to a couple of bright solar lights at pushpit and pulpit which will switch themselves on and off, and cost peanuts.
 
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