Have you considered adding a mast spotlight to your yacht?

Perhaps we’re asking too much of the good old anchor light. Set against the lights of a busy town or a lively Greek chora, it’s bound to disappear.

Add a busy anchorage, a moonless sky and the arrival of a yacht skippered by an exhausted solo sailor – or a tipsy charter crew member – and you have a recipe for disaster.

The point of the anchor light is to make a yacht visible at night but, as far as I’m concerned, it’s the absolute minimum.

So when I looked at the hole left by the removal of the old roller boom handle on my Albin Ballad, I started thinking…. what if?

Enter the new, improved, I-have-a-megayacht-complex anchor light that lights up the entire mast.

LED spotlight attached to the mast and switched on. Photo: Nicholas Koligiannis.

It’s nothing more than a marine LED spotlight pointed upwards, attached to the mast with a stainless-steel hose clip tightened over the spinnaker car ring.

The flange surrounding the roller boom hole was large enough to allow a marine socket to be epoxied in place.

As my mast is keel-stepped, it was easy to pass a cable from the top and allow it to exit from below, through a rubber grommet, a few inches above the mast heel.

Spotlight plug fitted in the mast socket. Photo: Nicholas Koligiannis.

From there, I guided the cable to a fuse box.

Since both anchor light and spotlight are turned on by the anchor light switch on the main panel, I can operate the anchor light alone or, when I want Moments of Clarity to be really visible, I clamp the spotlight on the spinnaker car ring.

When looked at from a distance Moments of Clarity looks like a much larger yacht!

The lit mast as seen from Moments of Clarity’s foredeck. Photo: Nicholas Koligiannis.

Nicholas Koligiannis has been sailing since he was a child. His father was the Moody dealer in Greece so Nicholas always had the chance to tinker with family-owned boats. In 2001 he bought Moments of Clarity, a 1973 Albin Ballad.

Want to read more articles about installing a mast spotlight?

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