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