Sailing at night is to be expected in the Everglades Challenge. This is one of the features of EC racing that distinguishes it from cruising. With minimal moonlight to help us this year, we will need to "keep a strong spot light handy". That's a quote from Steve Isaac ("Chief") found here. We need a good spot light for the 11th annual EC and for future cruises.
We have recently upgraded the Dawn Patrol's standard equipment to include a dive light: the C8 eLED by Underwater Kinetics which was a much appreciated birthday present. (Thank you Dawn.)
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| C8 eLED from Underwater Kinetics. Includes a wrist strap and batteries. |
Beam distance is 577 ft using 8 fresh alkaline C batteries. The grip has a locking rotary switch for high (up to 250 lumens), low (up to 160 lumens), and off. A small heat-sink in the middle of the lens efficiently cools the LED source and consequently the light is brighter underwater than when used onboard. The trade-off is shorter battery life underwater. The charts below indicate good performance out to about 14 hours of use onboard. Underwater Kinetics also makes a smaller 4-battery version, the C4 eLED.
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| Performance: underwater (pale blue) versus in air (darker blue) |
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| Performance: with alkaline batteries (red) versus with rechargeable NiCad batteries (green) |
UK's C8 eLED seems like a solid performer. We'll see.
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