On Tue, 7 Aug 2007 05:49:51 -0400, "Roger Long"
wrote:

The real issue was weight. I could have bought a ready made MOB pole, with
a light even, but a lifetime of doing stability calculations told me that
the ones I saw in stores and catalogues were going to blow pretty much flat
in the water in heavy weather. I wanted to get the light high and the
center of gravity as low as possible.

As you may know, the traditional solution on offshore racing sail
boats, where a MOB with STROBE is mandatory equipment, is to use a
floating auto-activated STROBE attached to the pole with a short
length of line. The STROBE is usually hung from the stern pulpit
directly behind the helmsman, and a quick chuck overboard activates
the light and pulls the MOB into the water along with it. These
things are ready made for the purpose, reliable, visible and have
withstood the test of time. Unless you just like to tinker I'd go
with the proven solution.

http://www.landfallnavigation.com/sfwl1.html

Well, I do like to tinker.

If reed switches worked as advertised (burglars must really love the things
since they are ubiquitous on alarm systems), I would have an excellent set
up right now. It clearly is the switch because I can sometimes get it to
switch from steady to flashing mode by banging on the pole.

In a racing boat charging hard under a spinnaker it may take a couple of
miles to get things under control enough to start back. In that case, you
need a really bright strobe. The rules were also written before GPS track
back and MOB waypoint entry so the search area could rapidly become several
square miles.

I'll get back within about 100 feet of where I punched the MOB button on the
GPS and in any conditions where I can make the boat go back, the turn will
take place within a few hundred feet at worst. There just isn't anything
complex to deal with in the rig. I want something to guide the PIW to the
pole and life ring.

There is a very interesting passage in an early edition of "Heavy Weather
Sailing" describing how hard it was to locate and get to a floating strobe
in waves because it lit up so much water and wasn't above the waves long
enough to fix a visual location.

I would put the strobe on the lifevest and I have those as backup.

--
Roger Long