Cabin Light Confusion

[Kevin Henderson]

My wife and I have just returned after spending a wonderful weekend aboard Pau Hana.  She is a great boat and we're beginning to feel very comfortable with her. This was our first weekend aboard and our first chance to really get the feel for some of the "particulars" of the boat.  at the end of a day of sailing, we returned back to the marina and enjoyed some wine and dinner aboard and proceeded below. We like to read in bed and the V berth lights are perfectly positioned to serve the purpose.   What I found perplexing however, is the fact that, while the aft cabin and V berth lights have switches, the main cabin lights are not independently switched.  This means that in order to extinguish the main cabin lights I have to throw the main breaker back at the switch panel and kill all of the cabin lighting aboard.  For the life of me I looked and looked and could not locate a switch on any of the four main salon lights so that I could extinguish those lights and still have reading lights in the V berth.  Is there a trick or is my boat wired differently? 

[2ndwish]

On 2nd Wish (1987) the light fixtures in the saloon switch by sliding the whole fixture fore or aft.
T

[Stephen Butler]

We have 4 dome lights, 2 on each side of the boat.  Each has an off/on switch, in the front of each light, in the bezel mounting.  Perhaps your lights were replaced and the switches turn to the side/back of the lamps?  Also, the PO had wired a fan into one of the light circuits, which required turning on/off the light to operate the fan.  A simple fix, but an indication that owners may take a shortcut or 2 with their wiring. Hope this helps.

[Exodus]

I also had the rectangular lights wherein the whole fixture had to be slid fore to aft in order to turn them on and off.  I replaced these fixtures with LED dome lights as one of my first projects on the boat.

[Kevin Henderson]

Wow!!!  Fore and aft movement to switch on and off??
I do have the rectangular fixtures and while I was fiddling with the lights trying to figure things out I did notice that some movement made the lights flicker on an off.  At the time I was jiggling up and down and looking for a switch.  I did not think that a fore and aft movement could be the switch itself.  I'll investigate this weekend.
BTW... Were there diffrent types of interior lighting in the 86-89 models?  (Ours is 1988)  It sound as though some folks may have had dome lights.
I am looking into LED's but that will be saved for an entirely new thread altogether :-)

[Stu Jackson]

Kevin, boat lighting is a very subjective issue.  Everyone seems to like different "moods" which can be obtained in a variety of ways.  I was "sold" on fluorescents when we got our boat in 1998, until I went on board another C34 who'd gone overboard in those and it made his boat look like a jukebox down below, and he'd done what I had considered doing!  Glad I saw that first.

Since then, of course, LEDs have come on the market.  Maine Sail has a wonderful website and has done an in-depth look at LED lights, the primary issue being color rendition.  There have also been many discussions of LEDs on this board and a search on LED will give you hours of reading before you even ask the question again.  Read Maine Sail's evaluation and get familiar with his website.  http://www.pbase.com/mainecruising/root&view=tree

There's also our original Projects page which has some lighting discussions, admittedly old, but when we did ours we opted for two overhead lights over the galley and saloon table and left all the other original lamps, replacing the incandescents with halogen bulbs.  We find that with our trawler lamp, the old fixtures (rarely used in the saloon, much used in the berths), the galley fluorescent fixture and the overheads we get a great variety of lighting to suit any "mood."

http://www.c34.org/projects/projects.html

The individual Projects page articles have been distributed throughout the C34 Tech wiki.

[chuck53]

As said above, those lights do slide fore and aft.  One direction turns on one bulb and the other direction turns on both bulbs.
The fixtures use festoon bulbs that can easily be replaced with LED bulbs.  No need to go to the expense of replacing the whole fixture.
I bought some but I made a mistake and didn't order the "warm white" light.  What I got was a little too cool (Blue) for me.
I may reorder.  Go to SuperbrightLEDs.com.  Bulbs are very inexpensive.
They also have bulbs for the fore and aft cabins, but are only available in cool white.  Again, too blue for me.

[Ron Hill]

As Stu mentioned Catalina changed the style of cabin light fixtures almost every production year.  In some1987/ all 88 & 89? - they were "sliders". 

With the advent of LEDs (which have almost put the oil lamp makers out of business) you can save power and can get bulbs to fit any fixture you have onboard.  A few thoughts