Wednesday, December 1, 2010

And there was light

A week or so ago, I talked with you about getting Eolian gussied up for the Christmas season.  Well, it's done.

It wasn't the cakewalk I had thought it was going to be - getting the lites up there without tangling, without knocking the covers off of the LED's (OK, one went into the water, and Jane reports that they don't float) was not easy at all.

First, tho I had planned to put up one string, then attach the second, and then attach the third, it didn't work out that way.  It turned out that I had to deal with the whole 100' of twisted Christmas lites all in one go.  Not only did they desperately want to tangle with themselves, they also reached out and grabbed onto anything they touched.


Eolian is a ketch - why not stretch the lites over the whole rig?  The plan was to have the lites go up the forestay to the top of the mainmast, across to the top of the mizzenmast, and then down the topping lift to the aft end of the mizzen boom.  Conceptually simple, but tricky to execute.  The hardest part was getting the lite string around the ends of the spreaders.

But they're up, and they look great!  Indeed, they are the deep, DEEP blue, the blue that you can't quite focus your eyes on.  And strung over Eolian's spars they make an impressive display!

Now if only they'll survive until Christmas.
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6 comments:

Mike said...

Excellent. We purchased some LED lights last week for ZTC but then JUST found a set of solar-powered ones. I am going to rig those up today. Hopefully the strong wind doesn't blow them away.

Robert Salnick said...

Mike -

I'm not sure how effective the solar ones would be up here in the dark, rainy north...

But honestly, the AC-powered ones (even a 100 foot string) draw a truly insignificant amount of power. I'll have to check, but I think it is about 5 watts.

bob

Anonymous said...

I installed the solar ones yesterday...

and then broke them this morning (don't ask)...

and then fixed them...

Mike said...

uhh... that was me. :)

Robert Salnick said...

Mike -

My 100' string is made up of 2 40' strands and 1 20' strand. The 40 footers draw 0.08 amps, and the 20 footer draws 0.04 amps.

So I underestimated a little - instead of 5 watts, its more like 20 watts. Probably more than you want when you're living off of solar panels...

So, final state for you is that they are working? Cool.

bob

Mike said...

We went by a couple of boats here yesterday, CONNECTED TO SHORE POWER, that have about a 1000 lights on them.

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