Thinking About Sailing a Life Raft Across an Ocean?
Why Not?

Copyright © 2009 by Bebi Electronics, Ltd.

As long-term cruisers, at Bebi Electronics, we're always interested in people who think 'outside the box'. When we received an email one day saying:

Enquiry Hi Folks, I sail a much modified Tinker Traveller 12 foot sailing inflatable. I use it for long sea crossings and visibility at night is always a problem. Could you suggest one of your LED systems that might be suitable for use with a small 12v battery? Many thanks, Mike Pollard.

Mike caught our attention.

Further after further corresponence, Mike told us his plans and more about his lighting requirements

"My next trip is to double the Irish Sea (I've already sailed to Ireland in this boat with Tom McNally, the small boat Atlantic sailor) then an English Channel crossing from Plymouth to Brittany and another attempt to sail to Iceland!"

Mike also said "At present I don't have facilities for recharge, my battery is good for probably a week of nights (?) using low power consuming LED's. I don't need light for reading. My only concern is being visible to other craft."

We had had experience with the 7 a/h battery that Mike was planning on using for our Cila Ni Siga home lighting system, and know that we needed to get the energy draw down a bit more than the ~0.063 amps that our Owl Anchor light draws, so we made up a simple circuit which would occult the light.
Flashing an LED, no matter how you do it, will never produce the end results of a xenon tube strobe light. The rise and fall times of the xenon tube when it discharges is almost instantaneous, where as in an LED, the LED device itself has a built-in capacitance, as well as a 'linger' from the reflector (which is what turns a blue LED into a white colour), which prohibits any electronic design from matching the xenon tube. In addition, the circuitry for a xenon tube consumes a fair bit of energy as the capacitors recycle for the next flash. Although an LED occulting light (on more than off) does not match the sharp, attention getting characteristics of a strobing xenon tube, the 'un-naturalness' of the light tends to attract attention. In addition, because it is on more than off, it is far easier to get a visual bearing on the light from another vessel.

The boat with full sail, rigged for downwind sailing

Again, but reefed down somewhat.

The masthead detail, with the radar reflector. The Bebi 'Owl' light will be bonded to the top of the radar reflector