Freezing Christmas, with bling for my boat

 


With temps falling to freezing for the next few days for Christmas, all work is stopped. Epoxy doesn't cure well below 50 degrees F and I don't work well at that temp either. 



The work delay is frustrating but I spent the time opening the boxes for some pretty bronze fittings I bought online for my girl. Cantaora came with a batwing-style stern light in aluminum that literally fell apart in my hand as I was taking it off, so that will be replaced with a bronze batwing style stern light. It took some effort to locate one with a glass lens; plastic lenses on these vintage light fixtures tend to have clouded-up over time, potentially reducing the light's visibility which is set at a min. 2 nm by law.

Note the three bronze padeyes. Two will be used for the sheeting blocks, and the third will be a strong point to connect a tether in the cockpit.

I also got a nice bronze bi-color bow light. The separate port and starboard nav lights on the standard Typhoon are located on the cabin sides which seem impratical to me as they are then visually blocked by everything forward of their location, which is half the boat.

IMHO a small boat is hard to see so deck level nav lights should be more prominently-mounted as forward as possible, clear of all deck clutter. I would have mounted the bowlight higher up too on the pulpit but I had already decided to get rid of the pulpit entirely along with lifelines. I have to figure out how to mount the bicolor light on the bow later. The LED bulb in the fixture has to be changed to a warm white color bulb too; the cool white light bulb it came with causes the green starboard lens to cast what seems like a bluish light once the light is illuminated. In any case, these deck lights will be secondary and backups to the mast-top tricolor-anchor light or to be used in close quarters; the mast-top tricilor which can be seen from much farther away will be used when in open water. 



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