I also looked at the cost of the lights before deciding to purchase them.  I do quite a bit of nightime sailing on the lake and there are quite a few fishing boats around. I thought the $150 + was a fairly cheap price for safety equipment that could well prevent a much more costly accident.  Now that I will have more free time to sail - I retire Jan 3 - and plan to do more coastal, and I hope near coastal  (Dry Tortugas, Bahamas) sailing, I feel a lot more comfortable with that lighting system.

I keep my sailboat at a dock on the lake and use an old car battery charger (fully automatic) so keeping a charge is not a problem.  In anticipation of doing some  longer sails, I invested in a large capacity deep cycle battery.  I have been away from the dock (no recharging) for a week at a time without the battery getting down to 50% charge/discharge. Besides the lights I also have a knot meter, depth guage, VHF radio, cabin lights and a tape player.   I sometimes purposely drain the battery to 25% to keep it from building up a "memory".  I am now looking into using a solar panel to charge the battery while away from the dock for longer periods of time.

John Edwards
"Miss T"
M17 # 372