Lights!

I bought a 12-volt LED bow light for Firefly and thought it would be pretty easy to install.

Well, it was pretty easy to install the light itself... but the wiring of it wasn't so easy! First-off, I learned that I shouldn't just use any old wire, but rather proper marine-grade stuff. The difference? Each strand of copper is tinned! So it looks like it's aluminum or something.

I started with the switch. I used a part from the portable stern light that I got; I had no idea what it was for, but after pulling out the threaded insert and drilling the hole out a bit, it was perfect for holding the switch:

John helped me solder the leads to it, one of which was for the fuse. The switch is on the starboard side of the companionway. I've since written "OFF" to the left with magic marker, as it's "ON" in the above photo.

I led the wire forward along the cabin side and through the forward bulkhead to the "focsl", where I tied it in to a post set-up I made. I'm not sure if it's kosher, but it's what came to mind to do, rather than having wires just hanging around (enough of that already!):

 There was a lot of head-banging and cussing involved in putting this together. As I lay on my back trying to squeeze myself into the bows I was always sliding down aft. Looking up, I had the flashlight hanging in the lines you see going across below, and my glasses on upside-down so the bifocal reading part of the lenses was up. Barely workable, but got it done!

The wire leading down to the left above goes to the battery,

a 12-V gel cell that John donated to the cause. It's now turned around and firmly squished in between that water tank in the bows and another cube of water between it and the mast. It's not going anywhere! Notice that it's a "sacred" battery—don't know what I did to deserve that! ;-)

Lights on!

For the stern light, as I mentioned above, I bought a portable one that operates on 4 "AA" batteries. It came with a post and a clamp and some other stuff that was undocumented. I thought I'd be using the clamp (to clamp the post to the boat), but after trying it out I considered it too mickeymouse, so I made my own post holder at John's out of fibreglass:

I just happened to have a screw that tapped into one of the holes in the bottom of the post!

I didn't go with a portable bow light because of access to the bow being so restricted—I didn't want to have to be going forward to set it up or turn it on and off. But the stern light is a no-brainer for that. It will be stowed until needed.

Of course the rudder won't be up when the light will be in use, but I may consider putting a window in the mizzen.

Another project completed was finishing the bottom edges of the boom tent and putting extra loops on so that the edges could be tied from higher up, for summer air flow-through:

The sides of the boom tent can now be either up a foot, or down closer to the deck. It sure makes a big difference in comfort, having the sun blocked out of the cockpit!