Underwater Lights

I added underwater lighting to my trim tabs. The neet thing about this is when the trim tabs are in the up position, the lights are up and out of the water. That way you can change a light bulb if necessary without waiting to pull the boat out of the water. It also helps to minimize any corrosion of the lighting system parts.

When I first designed and installed this in spring of 2008, I had the brackets made and mounted straight "up and down". The light pointed straight back until the tabs went down. There was a little problem as the trim tab travel is not that much and did not allow the light to actually make it all the way down into and underneath the water. They were about half way in the water depending on the about of fuel remaining in the fuel tanks.

So this year, I took them all the way off, bent the brackets a little, re-painted them, and put it all back together again. Now, when the trim tabs are down, the lights are all the way underwater.

Works perfect!

This first picture is the first completed installation in 2008.

Click on the pictures for a larger view.

Starboard side, during installation.

Starboard side, Trim Tab up.
Starboard side, Trim Tab down.

Port side, during installation.

Port side again.
Here is the 2009 redo, the brackets are bent down a little bit and both trim tabs are in the "up" position.

Here, the starboard trim tab is "down" and the port tab is "up".

Here's one with the boat in the water and the trim tabs are in the "up" position.

Last year, 2008, I started with one light a "white" color and the other one with a "blue" color. This was so we could decide which color we liked. Well the white one definitely was brighter and attracted more little fishies underwater.
But we decided and went with the blue ones this year. They just look prettier and have more ambiance to us.

I wired them up to the helm dash panel and put in a new switch to turn the lights on. The new switch went into an accessory blank space. I also put in separate in-line fuses, 1 for each side.