Hanging Lamp | SV Seas the Day

The numerous delays we’ve had have been annoying, but Mark has managed to finish up lots of small projects. Yesterday he installed LED lights in the cockpit which we can switch from white to blue. They give a nice ambiance to the sitting area and if we need more light we can lower the hanging lamp to see what we are doing on the table, such as playing Mexican Train. In this photo the hanging lamp is on a hook on the bimini where we keep it when we are sailing or the boat is rocking too much. We have two recessed lights in the roof and are going to add two more. One will go directly over the grill and the other will be centered between the two posts.

Yesterday, the Spectra service rep came and repaired our watermater. We needed a new pump and had paid for it to be shipped overnight from California. Mark could have installed it, but was unable to order it himself. Now we are ready to go and can leave during the next good weather window, which should be Monday or Tuesday.

Today we plan to do some last minute provisioning and celebrate by going out to lunch at one of the many restaurants in Coconut Grove. Most have outside seating which means we can take Sailor with us. We don’t quite trust him alone on the boat while we are out in the water. He stayed on the deck in Stuart at the dock for hours at a time when we were gone and never tried to get off the boat. However, he has discovered the thrill of dinghy rides and just might decide to dive in and swim after us if we leave without him. He doesn’t like to swim yet, but being with us in the dinghy might outweigh that fear until he is a little older. As you can see below, he is getting fairly bold. I suppose soon he’ll be using this window as a door since he can already get halfway in.

The sunsets are usually lovely in Miami, and last night’s was typical.

This morning dozens of sailboats are going out the channel onto Biscayne Bay for races. Sailor finds this interesting but prefers to view it from the comfort of his own deck.

The Lagoon 420’s came equipped with halogen overhead lights in the cabin and cockpit……lots of them. Last year we began switching them over to brighter, energy efficient LED lights. We finished the replacements this month. There were 12 alone in the salon/galley, and a total of 40 to replace. While considering what to put in the cockpit sitting area, where Mark recently built a large drop-leaf table, we wanted something that would provide plenty of light for card games, Mexican Train, reading, relaxing, and of course eating. There are only two lights on the hard bimini ceiling which is 9.7 feet above the cockpit floor. Even putting the brightest LED’s there wouldn’t give us the amount of light we wanted, so Mark built a hanging lamp fixture. We brought home a number of possible “shades” and ended up using a rattan basket. Inside it, Mark mounted an LED dome light with 36 warm white LEDs. We also experimented with various colors and sizes of chains and decided to use a white one. Then we had to decide how high above the table it should hang, which we determined by sitting at the table and raising the fixture until it was above our heads. After all those decisions were made, Mark ran the wires and made the adjustments.

Now we have plenty of light shining on the table and our choice of blue or white LED’s high on the bimini ceiling. (Red is the preferred color for nighttime sailing because it doesn’t ruin your night vision, but we don’t like the look of red lights in the sitting area and don’t use those lights while sailing in the dark anyway.) We also have several lighting combination choices. We can have the two bimini lights on by themselves in either the blue or white color. Or, we can just have the hanging light turned on. If we want a lot of light we can use the overhead and hanging lights, all combinations made with switches.

Only one problem remains. A hanging lamp on a boat obviously swings whenever the boat rocks. We have a way of tying off the hanging lamp in heavy weather or when sailing, but probably will get used to the swaying while anchored or moored in relatively calm water. Visitors on the boat might get hypnotized if they stare at it for too long, however, because it does tend to swing back and forth and back and forth.