Rare bird - A Beneteau First 260 resource

November can be hit or miss in Minnesota. While we go as often as we can until the water freezes, often it is in winter sailing gear. Not so this year, where all four Shackleton Cup weekends were delightful, and 3 of them were warm enough to wear shorts. One of the warm ones featured an all-girl BlueJ crew. We had a blast, and ate and drank like kings. And queens. Here we are rolling a Santana 2023R under spinnaker in 15 knots. And it was not just the weekends, the next week Wednesday looked great so Dan and I took off a day of work and went sailing. My iPhone thought that was so cool that it made a movie out of the adventure. The last Shackleton was cooler (34F) and VERY foggy at the start. Only three boats ventured over to Maynards for the event. We had to use our compass and nav apps to get our of Wayzata Bay and into the open lake, where the visibility improved. On the way back we drag-raced an S2 7.9 on a tight reach back to Wayzata Bay. We were in a hurry an...

Depending on the build year and the market, the First 260 often came with a single light at the mast top, most typically a red/green/white navigation light. Designed for offshore/coastal use, the fixture placed the light source high where it was easily seen. The single light has its disadvantage however, the primary one being that there is no provision for an anchor light. You CAN replace the fixture to a stacked nav/anchor light, but beyond that being expensive, you still need to run another set of 12v wires to the top of the mast, and add a switch to your DC panel to control it. So most boats stayed rigged in the original manner. A later option was a LED replacement fixture from NASA Marine in the UK. Called the Combi-LED, this light had the innovative ability to be controlled by ONE 12V wire pair, meaning no new wires to be pulled. It did this by reversing polarity to get anchor light, and came with a small switch to add to your panel to control this. I looked at doing this for ...