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Lighting question


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Hey Guys,

I was wondering what type of lights you run to light up your deck and surrounding water during pre-dawn and post-dusk. I have a T-top with rocket launcher and was hoping to incorpoate that with the lighting. Is one 1 mil cp spotlight enough or two 55w fog lights? Does anyone run red, or blue lights to help with night vision? Do you have a seperate light for when a fish strikes? Suggestions? Thanks.

Bob

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I don't like my boat lighting very much, so I won't speak too much about that :o I've been on boats that have a wide array of lighting and I've liked the smaller fog style lights over head best. This does the job without blinding you every time you turn toward the front of the boat.

I use those hat clip lights for setting lines and getting fish. The LED ones work great and most are have multiple settings to change intensity.

My wife is very big into theater, and they run into a similiar issue. How do you provide a very small amount of light backstage while not ruining the eye's ability to transition to different lighting? Most backstages use small blue lights because blue lighting will penetrate well to light up nooks and crannys while not causing your eyes to have to readjust drastically for night vision or bright lights. Since I do not have a rocket launcher on my boat, I will probably use this concept to fix the lighting on my deck.

my 2cents,

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I have two 55W lamps with defusers lenses. I am not sure if they are fog or driving lamps. I clamped them to my canopy frame so they are overhead. When I fold down the canopy they are still out of the way. I wired them into an extra accessory switch on the dash. I am happy with them. We also use the clip on led lights for the brim of your hat to set lines.

Tom

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we have two 55w fog lights mounted on top of our trees,we mounted them with swivil type bases so that when a little light is needed they can be turned up to avoid shining directly into the water,we also use seperate switches for the lights so that just one or both can be turned on or off.this has worked very well,when pulling lines turn them both on and point them down and man its like daytime out there.another nice thing is with them on the trees we can turn them and shine the shore line has been very useful last summer when we had some pretty thick fog in the morning.

not saying this is the best set up but it works well for us.

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This is what I use for the lighting on my boat. I think they do a really good job at lighting up the back of my boat. This fog light kit($19.94) came with a switch.

lights.jpg

These are flood lights and not driving lights. You do not want driving lights as they have a beam instead of a spread out light.

I spent maybe $25 at Walmart on everything. I had extra wire around the house.

I attached the lights to the clips with 10-24 stainless screws and nuts. I clip these on my top. They are easily removed. Some day I will get a radar arch and I will install them permantly on the arch.

The work decent for charging your glow in the dark baits.

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I run two 55W halogens that I bought @ Boaters World $30 for the pair. They are mounted with my rocket launcher. This pic was taken during installation. I have since rotated the lights a little outward to help light up the water near the boat sides. It made a world of difference for early and late trips.:)

RocketLauncher.jpg

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This is what I use for the lighting on my boat. I think they do a really good job at lighting up the back of my boat. This fog light kit($19.94) came with a switch.

These are flood lights and not driving lights. You do not want driving lights as they have a beam instead of a spread out light.

I spent maybe $25 at Walmart on everything. I had extra wire around the house.

I attached the lights to the clips with 10-24 stainless screws and nuts. I clip these on my top. They are easily removed. Some day I will get a radar arch and I will install them permantly on the arch.

The work decent for charging your glow in the dark baits.

This idea seems pretty good. I was actually looking at a pair of blue lensed 55w lights that are also $20 from Autozone. I like the idea of bolting them to the spring clips. Do you have any issue with the clips falling off at all in rougher seas? If not, I may borrow that idea:D That would give me a lot of flexability when attaching them to the top without hindering the ease of being able to remove them when folding the top down and covering the boat.

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I like the idea of bolting them to the spring clips. Do you have any issue with the clips falling off at all in rougher seas? If not, I may borrow that idea:D That would give me a lot of flexability when attaching them to the top without hindering the ease of being able to remove them when folding the top down and covering the boat.

Never an issue with the rougher seas. Then again, I have a 27', 10,000lb boat :P The springs on the clips are pretty strong. I put one on my finger to see how much of a man I was. Call me a whimp :o

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  • 2 weeks later...

For the arch (permanently affixed) basically to light my cockpit and sarrounding area I use two 55W trapezoid flood lights. For aided night lighting in the cockpit I use two simple accesorry lights with red lenses. If I need to setup post dusk or pre-dawn I run the spreaders for all other conditions I use the red lights. This cuts down on my loss of night vision. I also have two lights under my rigger boards (amber) for lighting up an area around the boat. The amber lighting is enough to see out a ways and also cuts down on loss of night vision. The amber still takes a few moments for night vision to return however it's not as obtrusive as the white light.

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