Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Solar Powered Christmas Lights

photo by Konnor Boivin

We sent our gondolas out into the crazy madness that is
the Newport Harbor Parade of Lights.

Fifty-one weeks out of the year, our standard running lights
serve well  - keeping other boats from colliding with ours,
but during parade it's a different story.

photo by Konnor Boivin

Visibility is survival out on the water, and in a black boat in the dark, you need more than just the little red and green up front and a white light on the tail.

This is where solar powered lighting systems come in mighty handy; they are
self-contained, and easy to mount on the boat.
My right-hand-man Steve Elkins did a great job of decorating these two gondolas.

photo by Steve Elkins

In twenty years on the back of a gondola, I've only been run into one time...and yes, it was during boat parade.  The guy was driving a boat with christmas lights draped from the bow rails of his yacht. 
The whole boat was lit up, and my guess is that he was pretty lit up too.

Nobody got hurt, and it ended well for the gondola too,
but it sure could have been worse.

Since then I have strong opinions when it comes to visibility on the water.
 
photo by Steve Elkins

Visibility is survival, but in this case it looks pretty good too.

No comments: