Power, or the conservation of energy

I am sure that my good wife Lynne will admit if pressed that I can be a bit of an obsessive.

My obsession of choice this month is power and how to conserve it while being away from a friendly recharge point in a marina.

Digging around in Dark Tarns many lockers is not only an education it is also for me at least an admission that some years ago I had exactly the same thought and followed it up right up to the point where I should have climbed the mast.

I offer the following.

This is a replacement for the 25 watt masthead tricolour bulb, it draws about 3.5 watts and lights up like this............

Totally waterproof and good for 50,000 hours. I have also saved 21.5 watts, assuming I am prepared to climb the mast and replace the existing bulb. Dark Tarn has at least one other 25 watt navigation light and a couple of 10 watt ones. So tomorrow I will remove all the navigation light bulbs and order replacement LED bulbs. Obviously this will need a trip up the mast however this will mean saving up to  4.5 amps every hour we are at sea, assuming the nav lights are on obviously, in the case of an Atlantic crossing could be 20+ days, x 10 hours of darkness, that is a lot of amps.......

The wind generator could easily cope with the reduced power demands if all the navigation lights were LEDs

So I know what I'm about come the morning...........