Anchoring LED bow, stern and amidships lights - blue light strips attached - 2018

 I am installing the two TritonLED SeaStrip 20" Waterproof Boat LED Strip 12VDC BLUE that we purchased from Amazon. There is an earlier post on this.

January 2018  -  Tied up in the El Cid Marina Mazatlán, Mexico

The manufacturer Kyocera Solar KD-135GX 135 Watt 12 Volt Solar Electric had already drilled holes in the panel. There was one on each end. I just enlarged those two. We had purchased three of these and one smaller one.

Enlarging holes.

Feeling for metal burrs.

Feeding through the wire.

I could have just run the wire from one light strip to the other in-front of the Kyocera Solar KD-135GX 135 Watt panel but it would not look right. So I snaked the wires through the panel and they will not be seen that way.

Ok the wires for the first LED light strip are through the panel. 

This will look just fine.😊

Yep looks good.

This wire is coming out of the back of the LED light and through the Kyocera Solar panel. It will connect to the photo sensor.

No to get the other LED light strip symmetrical with the first one (starboard side).

Not hard because of the previously drilled holes by the manufacturer. 

Just trying not to do any damage to the Kyocera Solar panel
and or slip and go through the dodger😨

Now threading wires again.

Got to like the working conditions. A beautiful day in a resort marina, in Mexico!

Ok the wires are snaked through and now to mount the LED lights themselves.

I used the little mounts that came with the LED light strips. 

If this project works out like I think it will then I could mount the LED light strips with some small dabs of 3M 4000 UV Marine Adhesive that would not be seen. That is, if these little clips break.

Next I wire up the photocell switch to the LED light strip

then the on\off\dimmer\flasher switch to the photocell switch.

On\off\dimmer\flasher switch which will be contently located just under the Kyocera Solar panel.
We can reach up and completely control the led blue light strips.
For instance we are sailing and want to reef. We are old school and go to the mast tethered but before we go we turn on the LED blue light strips for plenty of deck light.
Or we are anchored, we can turn on the blue LED light strips and then dim them down so they do not shine in our hatches. The switch will remember the last setting so the next night at anchor the blue LED light strips come on automatically with the photo sensor and are dimmed.
We haul anchor and reach up to the Kyocera Solar panel and click the switch off. No lights while under way at night.
We have a friend who just put two bright white LED lights under their spreaders. A nice idea and the light comes down which is nice. We tried to figure how to do that and get the wire into and down and out the mast. Never have been figured it out, there is always a hitch. They simply glued the wire to the outside of their mast and were done with it. We cannot do that, our boat is our home.
So this will hopefully do the lighting trick for night sail handling etc.
We have known people who have run their lines aft on the same boat as we have (our Islander Freeport 36'). They have complained of the lines being hard to pull because of all the turns in the blocks to get to the cockpit. We do see a problem with going up on deck when tethered and so far have watched the weather well enough to not be in a bad situation where the seas are bad and the wind is howling forcing us to get up there. Reef early and often!