BYYB Forums

Greetings all,



Attending the Strictly Sail show at Navy pier was a representative of NaviSafe, makers of a pair of nifty little navigation lights - a full round white light, and a sectional Red / Green / White light.



It looks like the Red / Green / White light would make a nice masthead light for our Pocket Yachts.



The package contains a safety lanyard, a pair of velcro mounting straps, a mounting screw, a magnetic mounting plate with slots for the velcro straps and a hole for the mounting screw, and the light itself.

Navisafe bills the device as an emergency backup lighting system should your main Navigation lights fail. The idea is that you can attach the mounting plate to the boat wherever you might need it, turn on the light segment(s) needed to replace the failed light, and drop the light onto the magnetic base. The four magnets in the base and the matching four in the bottom of the light are the rare-earth variety and hold the light quite securely.



Pressing and holding (3 seconds) the orange button on top turns on all three segments. Successive button presses reconfigures the light to be a bow light, port light, starboard light, stern light, and finally off.

[img width=225]http://home.comcast.net/~tomsweekender/byyb/NaviSafe_04_RGW_on.jpg[/img]

The all white light cycles between full round anchor light and stern light.




Red / Green / White




They also make mounting accessories with the same magnetic base to grab the light ...

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The LEDs are bright enough to meet the 2 mile Coast Guard minimums.

Shop around and you should be able to get one delivered to your door for under $70. Show pricing was a little better than that.  ;D

The light runs on 3 AAA batteries, and run-time is an advertized 24 hours with all three segments lit. Mine ran closer to 36 hours in 70 degree temperatures before one of the segments dimmed noticeably.

The light is about the same size as a hockey puck. Mounting would be as simple as lopping off an inch of your mast to make a level surface, and then screwing the magnetic mounting plate directly to the top of the mast. Then on days where you expect to be out past sunset, you could pop in 3 fresh AAA's, turn it on, and snap the light into the magnetic mount before you raise the mast for the day. So the upside to the batteries is that installation is a snap and you do not have to run wires up the mast. The downside is that the on-button is on top of the mast. If you do your after-sunset sailing from a dock, you can always reach the light by grabbing the shrouds from the dock and pulling the boat over to get at the button, like so ...

[img width=300]http://ukhbbr.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/greygoose-bouyancy-test.jpg?w=1200.000011920929&h=[/img]

... I never get tired of that photo. 

Watch the video ...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvfjlyEHgY4

NaviSafe Website

Cheers,
Tom