Orca Green Marine

[ralay]

I want to take a minute to recognize the awesome customer service of Orca Green Marine, the manufacturer of our LED anchor/tricolor light.  Ours came with our boat and was awesome.  We were always the brightest boat in the anchorage, it drew peanuts for amps, and had a photodiode so it only showed at night.  It also had a strobe function. 

We were sad to see it stop working and climbed the mast to check it out.  After troubleshooting and deciding the problem was the light, we were twice as sad when we realized how much new lights cost.  I sent OGM an email on a Saturday band got a call back in an hour.  Since we weren't the original purchase the woman I spoke to said she'd be happy to fix it for free or replace the whole board for a fee and give us a new lifetime warranty. 

As soon as she received it she called me to say she couldn't fix it, but they had so few failures, she' just send us a new one for FREE and guarantee it for life again.  We're pretty stinking happy. 

I'm not sure if a $450 LED light is really the most KISS solution, but if anyone does want to convert to save power, you really get a good product with a great guarantee for that money.  Not everyone will volunteer to replace a 10-year-old product when you just called to ask about troubleshooting. 

[Cruiser2B]

Great to hear of the excellent customer support and someone standing behind their products!

[Cyric30]

While i personally think a $450 light is out of my league for boat outfitting right now. It is hard to put a price on a good company that stands behind is products 100%. so i guess do you spend 10-50$ multiple times or 450$ once.... a question worth all of use to ponder.

[Bubba the Pirate]

Cool.
I'll be shopping for an anchor/ tri soon and will look for them.

[Owly055]

A lifetime warranty is great, but how often is a failure caused by the light itself?   

                                                                               H.W.

[ralay]

Well.  This time, for one. 

[Norman]

Remember, for quality and function, you are comparing to Aqua Signal at $469.95.

There are no really inexpensive masthead tricolors, with or without strobe.  I consider the strobe feature to be a prime value for ocean cruisers, both for emergency rescue signals, and to attract the attention of the bridge of a vessel on collision course.

Having the nav lights as high as possible is essential at sea.  40 feet higher expands your circle of visibility 6 NM.  An approaching vessel doing 30 Knots would be able to see you 12 minutes sooner.  That could be the difference between seeing and not seeing.  If the oppposing ship is a fully loaded tanker, the bridge is perhaps 40 feet from the ocean, too, and you have doubled the time between your nav light comes in sight to impact.  What is it worth to double that time?

If you plan to sail offshore, a high quality masthead light is extremely cheap protection from collision.

When I am sailing at night in a high traffic area, my portable bow bicolor has a 60 watt equivalent bulb in it, to assure that I am seen as far away as possible.  This helps to get the attention of those that only give way to over 60 foot vessels (who are required to have this much wattage).  At 22 feet, I need all the respect that I can get.  ;D  Otherwise, I have the usual factory installed dimbulb bicolor on the bow.  :-[

Ralay, I am certainly glad they have an excellent warrantee policy.

[ralay]

We already had a tow captain complain (via radio) that he was having trouble seeing our deck-level lights even when we were relatively close.  Our windvane obscures our stern light at some angles.  With all gear and sails on cruising boats, I imagine some other people might have similar problems.

Our anchor light was also A LOT brighter than many anchor lights.  It was bright enough to stand out from the stars and pick our boat out among many in an anchorage.  The solar yard lights that many people use strike me as okay for anchoring in places where people already expect to see boats.  I think they'd be pretty useless for anchoring in remote areas where power boaters may be travelling at full speed and not explicitly looking for boats.