Preparing for the Journey - LED Anchor Light

The last project on the stick was to replace the original anchor light with an LED light. We went with the Hella sealed fixture both because I've had years of good experience with Hella products, and I got it on sale. The one challenge with a sealed light is that the wiring is a little trickier - normally you run the wiring into the fixture and attach it to terminals there. With a sealed fixture, the fixture has a pigtail which needs to be connected to the mast wiring.
I figured the easiest solution was to mount the new light atop a small weatherproof (NMEA 4x) electrical box, and then attach the whole thing to the top of the mast. I mounted a small terminal strip in the box, and the mounting holes for the box match those of the original light, so everything went together pretty easily. I was nervous about the wiring though - if I somehow lost a grip on the mast wiring, it would have slid into the mast and been impossible to recover. To prevent this, I attached a couple wire ties to make the wire larger than the hole in the masthead, which worked out.

If I did this one again, I'd be a little more careful mounting the light to the box (I had to do a little excavating with a Mototool to get one of the nuts to fit - argh), and I would shim the box at the masthead. There's a rubber grommet around where the mast wiring comes out which ends up making a non-level surface for mounting the box. The mounting screws still hold everything in place, but it's less secure than I would really like.

All the aloft projects are now done - time to move on to the interior.